


Season 12

by ozonecologne



Series: Codas [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2017-07-20
Packaged: 2018-12-04 18:45:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 31
Words: 38,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11561148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozonecologne/pseuds/ozonecologne
Summary: A collection of my season 12 post-episode codas as published on tumblr, including a few unofficial canon!verse drabbles.





	1. Pre-season

**Author's Note:**

> Visit me on [tumblr](http://www.ozonecologne.tumblr.com) to find the rebloggable versions of everything you see here!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> buckylantern said: So yeah, totally canon that Mary was all “eww” about the impala but I had always blamed it on her wanting the other car for kid safety. But, get this, imagine John being all proud when Mary starts to get attached to the car but then Mary gets super attached to it. Like Dean level attached. And that’s why John kept the car for so long. Because it reminded him of Mary and the times they would go out and she’d drive for far longer than necessary. What if the impala was more Mary’s to begin with?
> 
> You wrote that last line and it fucked me up dude so here have a Mary x Impala pre-season coda

She darts outside to meet her love, grinning and bright out in the sunshine, and all that youthful loveliness melts away from her face as she comes to a stop at the curb. Her mouth twists into a disappointed scowl. Her eyes flick down, up again, critical. 

“What’s this?” she asks, tone lilting skeptically. Her eyebrows are poised for argument.

 _My car,_  John tells her. 

She walks around the back, inspecting it, and he follows at her heels like the lovesick puppy he is.

This hulking thing is loud, and sharp, and low to the ground. It’s black and intimidatingly… flat. Unsafe, too big, suffocating and dangerous -

“What happened to the van?” she asks in a strangled, panicked voice.

 _This is better than the van,_  John says, almost in a whine, before jabbering a mile a minute about carburetors and horse power. She doesn’t hear him; she just stares. The shiny paint on the hood winks, as if mocking her.

She hates this car. She hates it so much she can’t even stand it. 

* * *

It’s late, she’s got a headache, her feet are swollen and sore. She’s overcooked the pasta and she misses her parents and she can’t even have a beer and she’s really trying to hold it together, taking deep breaths and dropping her shoulders but -

The car’s engine revs in the driveway, too close and too loud, and Mary jolts. She spills boiling pasta water on her hand and yelps, shakes, starts to cry. She throws the pot into the sink and the overcooked pasta goes with it, limp and sad.

“Hey, Mare. Have a good - what happened?” John asks.

Mary’s blistering hand throbs. “I  _hate_  being pregnant. I hate that you still have nightmares about the war. I hate that you work such long hours, I hate that you  _have_  to, and I HATE THAT STUPID CAR,” she yells.

She’s too tired to stand anymore, so she carefully lowers herself to the floor and wraps her arms around her knees. John reaches forward to try and help but she doesn’t let him. Her belly gets in the way and she tries not to take her anger out on the baby.

She realizes she’s being irrational. But her hand really does hurt. This never would have happened if John had just gotten the  _van,_  like she asked.

John sighs. The sound is too loud in their tiny, silent kitchen. His footsteps seem to echo in approach, nearer and nearer until they stop and hesitate right in front of her. He crouches down, but she doesn’t lift her head to look at him.

“Lemme see that hand,” he murmurs.

Mary lets him take it into his own, brush his rough thumb against the raw pink skin.

“Got into a fight with our dinner, huh?” he asks. He laughs. “You could start a fight in an empty room. I've always loved that about you.”

“Just shut up,” Mary mumbles, trying to fight off the smile she knows is coming.

“Aw, don’t be like that. C'mon, Mary, show me a smile.”

Mary lifts her head, and John ducks his to meet her. His eyes are soft and glistening, but he’s barely smiling. There’s still sadness coiled there, lurking, waiting to be let out at some point, shrouded in the bone-weariness that comes from the kind of life he has to lead to support them.

“If you really hate the car, I’ll get rid of it,” he tells her.

Mary takes a deep breath. 

She loves John, and John loves the car.

“No, it’s ok,” she sniffs. John kisses her forehead and rubs down her arms.

“I don’t really hate it,” she confesses. “It just scares me sometimes is all.”

John nods sagely. “I get it. I got two girls with big personalities now. Don’t worry, you’ll come to an understanding one of these days.”

Mary rolls her eyes and punches him in the shoulder. “Go take that car to the store and get some more pasta.”

* * *

“Ok, now ease up on brake and - MARY, REVERSE, REVERSE.”

Mary slams back down on the brake and squeaks, lurching against her seatbelt. Her arm comes up automatically to pin John back against his seat.

He snorts. “What, are you parenting me now, too?”

Mary’s eyes flick over to where Dean is playing in the grass with Ms. Moseley. She waves. Dean doesn’t see.

“I can’t help it,” she says. She runs her hands over the stiff leather of the steering wheel. “Sorry,” she adds.

John shakes his head and takes a calming breath. “It’s ok. Just… shift gears, try it again.”

“This would go a lot better if you didn’t yell at me,” she tells him icily, following his instructions. “Or if this car wasn’t so fucking testy.”

John grinds his teeth and thankfully doesn’t rise to the bait that it is. “You gotta treat her like a lady. Slowly, now.”

Mary thinks everything coming out of John’s mouth right now is a load of shit, but she slowly takes her foot off the brake, and they roll out of the driveway.

“Good,” John praises. He pets the dashboard. “Alright, Baby. Be good for Mama, now.”

Mary rolls her eyes, but she keeps both hands on the wheel. She does not have the same faith in ‘Baby’ that John does.

“Nice and easy,” he murmurs, settling into his seat. They make a right hand turn up at the end of their street. Mary takes it without incident. Baby arcs so smoothly beneath her hands that there isn’t even so much as a bump.

Eventually, John gets so comfortable with her driving that he turns on the radio, never mind that it’s her first time.

Eventually, John falls asleep against the window, lulled to sleep by Baby’s gentle rumbling and a hangover from those endless late nights.

Eventually, Mary guides Baby back into their driveway. 

Dean claps and squeals when they come home. He recognizes the car. 

Mary feels her eyes get a little misty as she waves to him from the front seat.

* * *

She’s panting and writhing and John’s got the duffel bag by his feet but he’s also trying to drive and - 

“Aaah!” she yelps, as another contraction rips through her. “John, ah -”

“I know, I know, I’m going as fast as I can,” he babbles. He reaches one hand back to squeeze hers.

She arches up out of the leather seats, stained with her sweat and the fluid sluggishly dripping off her thighs. “Well  _go faster_ ,” she gripes.

He does. The sound of the Impala’s engine gunning up to 70 completely drowns out the sound of Mary’s whimpering.

After what feels like ages, John lifts her out of the backseat and hobbles into the emergency room with her. It’s a grueling couple of days, but the delivery goes smoothly and the baby is healthy. 

Little Sammy is very excited to go home, and so is Mary.

She is rolled out into the parking lot in a wheelchair, and the first thing she touches other than her newborn son is the gleaming hood of the Impala.

 _You got me here all in one piece,_ she thinks to her. _Now you’ve got to get us all home the same way._

She settles into the backseat and tucks Sam close. She could swear that there was something in the air as she pulled the door closed behind her, some radiated comfort as the dust settled, like magic, like the quiet hum of the radio, all through the car. Sam’s very first cradle. She’s not the only mother at the Winchester residence.

She pats the bench seat, and the car purrs underneath her.

* * *

Everything is torn from her all at once and too fast to keep track of. First her baby, then her husband, and their home, and the life she fought so hard for. She doesn’t even make it out into the hallway before the demon gets her.

When she wakes up, it’s not to the world she left behind.

Her sons are grown, and hardened, and have hidden themselves deep underground from the sun she so loved in life. An angel - a being of disillusionment and destruction - crowds her out of her faith and her home. She feels like she’s missing the punchline of every joke she hears, even though Dean grins at her when he tells them.

She retreats down to the depths of their cave when she can’t take it anymore, when she needs to be alone and hug her knees close to her chest.

But she opens a door, and there, parked under a wide tin roof, is the Impala.

Finally, a familiar face.

She takes her time walking over to her, watching how the chrome gleams under the garage lights, how solid and sturdy she still is after all these years. It’s like Mary never even left her. It’s the one thing Mary feels safe around.

She leans down and peers inside. The cabin is just the same. She learned to drive on those pedals. She grins a wicked grin and rests her hands inside the drivers side window.

“Hey, sweetheart. Remember me?”

_Because I sure remember you._

The shiny paint on the hood winks under the lights, and Mary finally feels at home.


	2. 12.01 coda

It’s going to take them too long to cross the Kansas state border, even with Dean gunning it down the roadways. The Impala creaks a little when they hit a bump; the glass littered on her dashboard klinks and jingles. Castiel carefully brushes some of it into his palm and sprinkles it out the broken window into the wind. His matted hair ruffles half-heartedly in the breeze.

Dean keeps twisting in his seat to look back at his mom, curled up in the corner averting his eyes, and tries to start about a hundred different sentences before Mary ends up falling asleep again and he’s missed his chance. He sighs, and carefully clicks the radio dial.

He and Castiel don’t make eye contact. Cas wheezes a little bit through his nose when he exhales.

“Man, she really did a number on you,” Dean murmurs.

Castiel squints at him then, he can feel it. “You’re one to talk,” he grumbles.

Dean concedes the point and bounces the knee of the leg that’s not anywhere remotely near the brake. Fast and hard.

“Maybe we should pay that nice veterinarian another visit,” Dean jokes.

Castiel sighs, and winces afterwards. He doesn’t respond.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters instead.

Dean does look at him then, a reflex, a double take. “What, why - why are  _you_ sorry? You’ve done nothing but kick ass for us since we set out.”

Another little piece of glass finds its way between Castiel’s fingers. He twirls it so it catches the light. “For losing Sam. For putting you all in danger. For letting Lucifer out -”

“Whoa, ok,” Dean coughs, reaching for the radio dial again. “Let’s not with this right now.”

Castiel doesn’t deflate at the rebuff, not like he usually would. He’s just… he’s pissed off, is all. He doesn’t have  _time_ to feel sorry for himself right now. “Regardless. I just wanted you to know.” The statement is to the point, factual, objective.

Dean waves a hand. “It’s in the past, man. Forget about it.”

His knee bounces faster. The Impala climbs up to high 70s now. Wind tears through the cabin and rushes in his ears. Or maybe that’s just the adrenaline.

Castiel eyes where Dean’s bloody knuckles have gone white and taut, pulling at the young scabs forming there already. “We’re going to have to stop eventually.”

Dean grunts.

A sigh. “If for nothing else, your mother needs hydration,” Castiel baits.

Dean relaxes on the gas pedal for a minute. “Alright. ONE gas station stop for a bottle of water. I’ll hold it up if I have to, we’re in and we’re out in less than five,” Dean growls.

With a nod, Castiel settles back into his seat. He crosses his arms, and then he too closes his eyes.

* * *

Dean feels better after spending some time behind the wheel, and having a destination in mind. A little bit of the fight and the panic from before has seeped out of him. It gets quicker every time as he gets older. Mary wakes up and gets some color back in her face when she hears Zeppelin on the radio (it’s not like Dean chose it special or anything), and she even smiles a little for him in the rearview.

 _She’s trying_ , Dean knows. She is not ok but she’s doing what a Winchester does: she’s rolling with it. He knows he could be better about helping her adjust, but his brother is in, like, imminent peril. He can’t force himself to slow down enough to explain what Google is. She isn’t quite what he expected, and he’s trying really, really hard not to feel disappointed about that.

“Do we have any water or anything?” Mary asks almost immediately after waking.

Dean smiles and shakes his head. 

If there is any positive side to this whole situation, it’s that Cas has his back.

“Yeah, I’m gonna get you some,” he promises. “Can you hang on a few more miles?” he asks.

Mary nods slowly. “Sure can,” she says, leaning back. She lets out a slow breath as she rolls her neck. “How’s the angel?” she asks.

Dean glances over - still dozing, head almost lolling out of the open window.

“He’ll live,” he replies.

Satisfied with this answer, Mary leans her head back against the seats. She taps out the rhythm of the song that’s playing with her fingers against her thigh. She sings under her breath, breathy and a little off-key and oh,  _that’s_ where Dean gets it.

True to his word, Dean screeches the Impala to a halt at the next gas station he sees. He gets a few scandalized looks from the other guys in the parking lot that eye the damage to the back bumper and the missing window, the blood on his jacket.

He throws open the door, tells his mom to sit tight, and trudges into the store.

The cashier is a little slow counting his change, but he does NOT hold the place up like he threatened he would. He takes the extra seconds to breathe a little, to clear his head and think of a plan. That’s what Sam would do.

There’s at least one other, he thinks. She’s probably got tools they’ve never seen before, like those magic brass knuckles that knocked even Cas flat on his ass. She knows they’re coming, so the element of surprise is out. He can’t rely on Castiel’s brute strength. Zapping angels anywhere takes its toll, and Cas is still recovering from possession. They need something else to get a leg up over these ladies, but he’s fresh out of ideas. He can only hope they outnumber whoever’s waiting for them.

He takes his time walking back to the car with his bag of snacks and water swinging in his grip, lost in thought. His lips move silently with snatches of battle plans, half-scrapped ideas. 

He glances up just for a moment, and stops.

Castiel is crouched down by the back bumper of the Impala, laying his hands in the broken grooves.

With a fondness that makes his heart ache, Dean plods over and takes a knee beside him. 

“It’s a cryin’ shame, ain’t it,” he sighs.

Castiel shakes his head. “If she weren’t already dead, I’d kill her again.”

Dean knocks his shoulder against his. “Atta boy.”

A beat of silence stretches on, Castiel tracing the folds in the metal and cracks in the paint with just the barest tips of his fingers. He’s frowning, but his eyes look sadder than they should for just a car, even if it is the Impala, and Dean suddenly regrets brushing him off earlier.

“Hey,” he says, gently.

Cas turns to look at him, and a little of the sadness lifts.

Dean’s mouth quirks. They’re hidden from view where Mary’s still waiting. “C’mere.”

Cas leans in, and Dean meets him halfway there, kissing him sweetly enough to steal his breath away. His split lip throbs, and Castiel still wheezes through his nose on the exhale.

“You ok?” Dean asks quietly, when they’ve parted.

His coat collar is rumpled and his eyes are a a little sleepy, a little shiny. But Castiel nods and his answering smile is real. “I will be. We’re all going to be ok,” he says.

Dean kisses his nose. Slow and gentle. “Glad you think so,” he says, and then he heaves himself up off the ground with a grunt.

“Come on,” he calls. “Time’s a-wastin’.”

Castiel stands, brushes the gravel off of his knees, and taps the top of the Impala’s trunk consolingly. “Let’s go get Sam,” he says to her.

“I like the way you think,” Dean quips. He tosses his bag of goodies into the backseat for Mary.

“Road trip!” he crows, and Mary scoffs distastefully at the joke.

He laughs anyway.


	3. 12.02 coda

Dean’s arms quiver under the strain of holding himself up for so long - a bead of sweat rolls down his bicep. From underneath him, Castiel digs his nails into Dean’s bare shoulders and pants into his mouth.

With a few hard, well-timed thrusts, Dean screws his eyes shut and moans between them. Castiel isn’t far behind; his grip relaxes and the motion of their bodies turns slow, languid, sleepy in the lamplight of Dean’s room. The tips of Castiel’s fingers touch the curve of Dean’s cheek and tickle the stubble growing in there.

“Mm,” Dean murmurs, as he finally lets his arms give out from under him. He collapses onto Castiel’s bare chest (NOT sweat-free, like the arrogant bastard is apparently so fond of saying) and grazes his teeth along the soft spot behind his ear. 

“‘s good having you home,” Dean slurs.

Castiel trails his fingers across Dean’s shoulders, down the dip of his back.

“Mm,” he mumbles, nuzzling into his hair.

Dean laughs. “Man. I even got  _pie_  today.”

Castiel presses a kiss to Dean’s temple. “Truly worth celebrating,” he murmurs.

“Thanks for coming in after us,” Dean says. He wiggles his hips a little, contemplating a round two. “And for backing me up with my mom.”

Castiel huffs. “She was not very accommodating once you left. Her… ‘mom-glare’ is truly fearsome.”

Dean lifts his head to look Cas in the eye. “Dude. She guilt-tripped you?”

“She shook her head at me,” Castiel tells him, squinty and a little sheepish.

Dean laughs and kisses him again. He drags his foot along the swell of his calf muscle. “You’ll get used to it.”

Castiel smiles at him then, with the same light in his eyes that he had when he found Dean alive at the bottom of the stairs. “I suppose I’ll have to. How are things going?”

Dean waffles, makes a noise. “Can we not talk about my mom while we’re naked?”

“Of course, I apologize.”

“‘S cool. Later, though.”

Castiel wraps his arms around Dean and draws him close again. Dean could very easily fall asleep like this, cocooned in his warm room with an angel’s arms around him and his belly full of good food. The pain and torture from earlier this afternoon is basically a distant memory.

“Cas,” Dean murmurs, just as he closes his eyes.

“Yes?”

Dean bites a kiss into Castiel’s collarbone, and smirks at the dark mark his mouth leaves behind.

“You better throw out that other guy’s number,” he growls. “I don’t like the way he was lookin’ at you.”

Castiel bites his lip to stifle a laugh. 

“Of course, Dean.”


	4. Pre-episode 12.03 coda

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written before 12.03 aired. Based on the promo shots for the episode.  
> Perhaps just a teeny bit influenced by a pre-season coda I wrote called ["stranger"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7582681)

Mary stomps into the library with a huff and splays her hands expectantly.

Dean, in response, sits up a little straighter and nearly chokes on his beer. “You cut your hair,” he sputters.

Mary nods resolutely, defiance sparking behind her eyes. “Yes. I did.”

It’s not supposed to matter, it’s just hair, but it does and it’s not. Dean remembers squeezing his chubby baby fists into that long blond hair, and now even that’s gone. A dumb haircut is another reminder that this woman is a stranger to him and he’s having a mini existential crisis over it. Because he doesn’t know any better, Sam only nods with wide, wet eyes.

Unfortunately for him, Castiel chooses this moment to walk through the door. Mary’s hard eyes pin him where he stands.

“Castiel.”

The angel stops, guilty and suspicious but not knowing what for. “Yes?”

“What do you think?” Mary asks, fanning her hair out behind her.

Castiel’s eyes dart to the side. He fidgets. His eyes go back to her face. He squints critically, giving serious thought to the question. “I like it,” he decides.

Mary brightens instantly. “Thank you,” she says sweetly. “It just feels fresher.”

“It frames your face very nicely,” Castiel adds.

Dean twists in his chair and meets Castiel’s eyes with incredulity. He shakes his head at him, slow and disappointed.

Mary claps her hands together. “Well. I’m off to find a vacuum to get all that hair off the bathroom floor. We should do something about dinner soon,” she announces.

She turns and leaves the library in just as much of a whirlwind as when she stormed in, letting the remaining three of them to fill the silence.

Dean coughs in Castiel’s direction once she’s gone. “Suck up,” he mutters. He coughs again to hide the jab.

Castiel narrows his eyes at him. “Would you like me to do something about that cough, Dean?” he offers.

Dean shakes his head. “No thanks. It’ll pass,” he states. Sam scoffs and rolls his eyes.

“I’m just trying to help her feel comfortable in her own skin,” Castiel tells him. “So much has changed – it’s natural that she’d want to take control in some way.”

Dean shakes his head again. “Yeah, yeah, whatever… Suck up.”

This time, Sam snickers.

Castiel rolls his eyes and leaves the library, in search of more civilized company.

 

They’re driving back from a possible lead on the monster of the week that’s been terrorizing this area of southern Nebraska when Mary giggles a little to herself.

Dean ignores it the first time, but the second time it happens, he looks in the rearview.

Mary is hunched over her very first cellphone, lifted cheeks illuminated by the washed out blue light coming from the screen. She hadn’t expressed much desire to get used to the thing when Dean bought it for her, but all of a sudden she’s intensely interested, eyes narrowed in determination.

“Whatcha got, Mom?”

Mary whips her head up and pockets her phone quickly, face betraying nothing. “Oh, nothing. Emojis.”

Dean shrugs and figures she must be spending some time with Castiel.

Though, that thought does strike him as kind of odd; he’s not sure where it came from in the first place. Mary still doesn’t really like Castiel; she watches him out of the corners of her eyes when he thinks she’s not looking and doesn’t get too close when they pass each other in the hallways.

He figures,  _no, that can’t be it,_ and doesn’t think about the exchange again.

 

“Could you get that for me, dear?” Mary’s voice rings out.

Dean is about to get up out of his seat to obey, but by the time he lifts his head from his computer, Castiel is already handing Mary the jar of honey that she’d been pointing at.

“Thank you,” she says.

“ _Dear_?” Dean echoes.  _I thought I was ‘dear!’_

Mary frowns. “What, is that weird?”

Castiel looks uncomfortable. “I don’t mind,” he offers. “If you call me that.”

Mary turns back to him. “Oh, good. I was worried I had said something wrong again. I can’t keep up with all the slang.”

Castiel sighs. “Believe me, I know how that feels.”

Mary smiles, broad and honest, and rolls the jar of honey around in her hands. “Would you like to join me for breakfast?” she asks, shyly and a little quieter. “I like to eat outside when it’s warm enough.”

The invitation is clearly not meant for Dean, drinking his morning coffee at the table not ten feet away from them, and he frowns to himself. Maybe he’s just tired. Maybe he’s just  _imagining_  –

“I would like that, yes,” Castiel says, equally shy and quiet. So he grabs his decorative mug of coffee and gets ready to follow Mary outside.

Dean had thought that having a buffer between him and his mother might get rid of some of the awkwardness between them, and he’s truly grateful for Castiel trying to help him fix their relationship. He’s confided a lot in him, and he knows a lot more about feelings and things than he lets on. But now Dean’s starting to wonder if he’s slowly being edged out of his own family. Sure, he wants Cas and his mom to get along, but at what cost?

He grumbles to himself as he finishes his coffee, now just cold and gritty grounds.

 _He’s_  supposed to be the favorite, damn it.

 

“We’re going out,” Mary says, grabbing her coat off the rack by the door.

Dean gets up, looking around for his boots. “Ok. Let me grab my shoes and I’ll start up the car – ”

“No need,” Mary interrupts. “I meant me and Castiel.”

Dean blinks and readjusts. “Sorry?” he asks, the word coming out a bit strangled.

“Castiel and I are going for pizza. There’s a new movie out I’d like to see, too. Don’t wait up,” she explains. It’s only then that Dean notices Castiel standing slightly behind his mother, holding the bunker door open for her.

Dean frowns. “Um. Ok. Just… don’t stay out too late,” he tells her.

Mary smiles patiently instead of making a joke. “We’ll be home by midnight,” she promises, sarcastic. And then they’re gone, and the sound of Castiel’s ugly truck starting up is a distant rumble.

Dean has nothing to do but sit back down and rethink his life choices.  _My mom stole my best friend,_ he marvels. Maybe he should have seen this coming. Cas is pretty awesome.

Sam finds him like that about a minute later. “Hey. Did I hear the door?”

Dean nods, dazed. “Mom and Cas went out.”

Sam answers with his own nod. “Cool. Where?”

With a scoff, Dean answers, “For pizza and a movie.”

Sam’s face goes carefully blank, like he’s trying not to look surprised and failing miserably. “Oh,” he says, diplomatically.

“Yeah,” Dean says, a little hysterically.

Sam’s eyebrows go up. “Without us? Seriously?”

Dean throws up his hands.

“Wow, ok.” Sam slides into the seat in front of his brother, processing silently in that sensitive way of his. He opens his mouth to speak again eventually, but closes it just as quickly.

Dean looks up. “What,” he dares.

Sam leans forward on his elbows and licks his lips, struggling with something. “You do know what this sounds like, right?” he says in nearly a whisper.

“Don’t say it,” Dean growls.

“It sounds like a date.”

Dean points a hard finger in Sam’s face. “It is not a date.” He hesitates, his doubt getting the better of him. “Wait. Is it?”

“No,” Sam scoffs. “I mean… no.”

They just stare at each other for a moment.

“They have been spending a lot of time together recently,” Sam muses, cautiously.

Dean goes pale. “Oh, God. They’ve been texting,” he realizes with horror.

It figures. Just when Dean feels like he’s got his feet back under him, maybe even brave enough to get as close to Cas as he’s always wanted, the guy pulls a Jacob Black and falls in love with his mother.

“What are we going to do?” Sam asks desperately.

Dean tries to take a steadying breath. “I, well. Um.” He scratches the back of his neck. “I gave them a curfew,” he says weakly.

Sam groans. “Oh my god.”

“Holy shit.”

This is worse than he thought. This is So Not Good.

 

Dean’s up like a shot when he hears the front door open. Mary’s quiet laughter floats down to where he’s hiding in the kitchen, and he’s weirdly annoyed that she sounds so happy.

He goes out to meet them, and can literally feel his blood pressure spike when he sees Castiel’s signature tan overcoat draped around Mary’s shoulders. He’s lingering at her side in just his suit jacket, hair carefully tussled.

_By the wind, or by a pair of manicured hands?_

Dean shudders, and tries to ignore the sound of his heart cracking down the middle. He does feel partial ownership over the coat; it’s not the same one but he once carried a version of it around in stolen cars for months after Castiel vanished, and he’s the only one that’s ever felt comfortable pulling at its seams, reaching into pockets and clutching it in desperate hands.

And now it’s been given away to someone else.

How weird is it to be jealous of your own mother?

“Hi,” he accuses.

Two pairs of eyes dart down to meet him. Mary smiles innocently. “Hi, Dean.”

“How was the movie?” he asks politely. But he isn’t looking at her; he’s looking at Castiel.

“It was alright. We had to drive to Esbon, you know,” she says, while Castiel nervously meets Dean’s eyes. “It was the – what was it, Castiel, The Train Girl?” she asks, tapping Castiel’s chest with the back of her hand.

Castiel breaks Dean’s gaze. “The Girl on the Train,” he reminds her.

Mary snaps. “Right. You should see it when you get a chance,” she says, this time to Dean.

Dean smiles, tight and insincere. “I already read the book,” he says.

Mary nods, and an awkward silence descends upon them all.

“Right, well,” Mary says, shrugging out of Castiel’s coat. “Thank you again for tonight, Castiel,” she says, handing the coat back. “I had a lovely time.”

Castiel practically beams at her as he takes the coat back. “Of course, Mary. We’ll have to do this again soon.”

“I would like that very much.”

Dean’s eye twitches.

Castiel claps Dean on the shoulder as he brushes past him on the stairs and Dean very nearly brushes him off. His hands clench to fists at his sides.

He’s got a lot of complicated emotions to make sense of right now.

Mary heads into the kitchen to make her now customary bedtime cup of tea, and Dean follows her. He discreetly pulls out his phone and sends Sam a text.

**Cas in his room. I got Mom. Fire when ready.**

He gets an almost instant reply.

**Got him. Remember: BE DELICATE.**

Dean slides his phone back into his pocket.

“So,” he says too casually, leaning against the counter. “Headed to bed soon?”

Mary nods, a little dreamily and sleepy-eyed. “It’s been a long day. I had trouble keeping my eyes open in the theater.”

Dean nods – it’s just the opening he needs. “You and Cas are getting pretty close, huh? Spending a lot of… time together.”

Mary nods and tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. “He’s really not so bad. I can see why you like him, he’s very sweet.”

Mary picks up her mug and her tea bag and heads for the door. Dean makes a noise and ticks his head to the side.

“The sweetest,” he painfully agrees, following.

 

At the same time that Dean is coaxing answers out of Mary, Sam is leaning against Castiel’s bedroom door. The angel is loosening his tie, standing in front of his dresser with a smile on his face. He looks over and nods, unassuming and trusting.

“Hello, Sam. Did you need something?”

Sam crosses his arms and tries for subtlety. He doesn’t hesitate drawing up to his full height, though, imposing and broad. “So, I heard you and Mom are getting along pretty well now.”

Castiel smiles wider, open and easy. “Yes, I think we are. I like her very much.”

Sam frowns and steps into the room. Normally he would wait to be invited in, but… extenuating circumstances.

“So… when you say ‘like…’” Sam trails off.

Castiel’s smile falters. “I enjoy spending time with her. We are… compatible, in many ways,” he says.

Sam’s eyebrows hitch up. “Compatible,” he repeats.

Castiel nods. “Well, yes. I know what it’s like to struggle with not fitting in, and being human again after a long absence from reality,” he explains. “I know I would have appreciated help figuring those things out when I went through them. I’m just trying to offer Mary the same security I didn’t have.”

Sam bulldozes right past the guilt trip. “Uh huh. Very noble. But, um. Cas,” he says, inclining his head. “Did you, um. Think this through? Did you even think about how we might feel about this? How  _Dean_  might feel?” Sam stresses.

Castiel frowns, and nervously starts fiddling with the hem of his shirt. “I thought…” He clears his throat. “I thought Dean might be pleased. That both of you would be.”

Sam narrows his eyes and grinds his teeth a little. “How on earth could you think that Dean would be  _happy_  about you dating our  _mother_?”

The statement hangs in the air for a very long moment. Castiel’s face turns ghostly white, and his lips pucker like he’s just about to say something. But before he can, the sound of glass shattering echoes down the hallway.

 

“Dating?” Mary exclaims, white as a sheet. “Dean,” she laughs, “I may have been resurrected yesterday, but I wasn’t _born_ yesterday. I know better than to go after someone that's not available.”

Dean’s own face is very red. “What do you mean ‘not available?’” he demands.

Mary’s face falls. “Oh, Dean,” she tsks.

 

Sam ignores the sounds in the hallway and holds out his hands towards Castiel in a placating gesture. “It’s ok if you are,” he lies. “I just want you to be honest with us,” he reassures him.

Castiel wipes a hand over his mouth. “Sam. I have no romantic interest in your mother.”

Sam narrows his eyes. “Are you sure?”

“None whatsoever. What even made you think – ?”

Sam shrugs. “The compliments, the texting, making her laugh, eating breakfast together, the pet names? And, it does sound like you took her on a date tonight.”

Castiel reels. “A date?”

“Yeah, you know. Pizza, movie, the whole shebang. You paid for everything, I’m assuming,” Sam says.

Castiel is frighteningly still. “I did,” he says, dubiously though. His shoulders tense and he straightens slightly. “Does – Does Mary think of this as…?”

Without another word, Castiel leaves the room, and Sam gets up to follow.

 

They converge on Dean and Mary in the hallway, doing their best to communicate nonverbally on either side of Mary’s smashed mug, currently leaking tea all over the floor. Dean squares his shoulders when Castiel approaches the two of them, taking a deep breath to steady himself. “Well?” he asks, voice a little husky. Sam is shocked by the betrayed way that Dean’s lip quivers. The whole thing is a freaking soap opera.

Castiel glances between Mary and Dean furtively, back and forth and back, before finally settling on Mary at last. “Forgive me,” he says to her.

Then he reaches forward, grabs Dean by the collar of his shirt, and kisses the ever-loving daylights out of him.

Sam stands slack-jawed against the other wall. Mary barely reacts beyond averting her eyes and turning a little pink.

When Castiel pulls back from the kiss, Dean blinks at him with his lips still pursed and stars in his eyes. Castiel turns back to Mary again.

“I don’t want you to misunderstand my intentions,” he says.

Mary makes a face. “I’m under no illusions about our relationship, Castiel.”

She turns to Sam, since Dean is still malfunctioning from the kiss too thoroughly to even begin to hold a coherent conversation with. “I am going to bed, and I expect never to speak of this again,” she says.

Sam nods, speechless.

Mary carefully sidesteps the broken glass still on the floor, and meets Castiel’s eyes again. “I’ll see you on Wednesday for yoga,” she promises.

“Yoga?” Sam repeats, breathlessly.

Mary pats Castiel on the shoulder, and goes to do the same for Dean, but seems to think better of it. “Ok. Goodnight,” she says, shuffling away.

 

Sam is the first one to move after that. “Ok, well, that was embarrassing. I’m going to… go.” He starts to hurry away before snapping his fingers, returning, and rushing a, “Smooth, by the way,” in Castiel’s general direction before hurtling down the hallway back to the comforting silence of his own room.

Castiel turns back to Dean, who still doesn’t look totally in control of himself.

He self-consciously licks his lips. “Just, um. To be clear.”

Dean nods his head really, really slowly. He tilts his head.

“Does this make me a home wrecker?” he asks.

Castiel backs him up against the wall. “Shut up, Dean.”

There are no more misunderstandings about which Winchester Castiel is romantically interested in from then on.

(And guess what? Dean really is still the favorite.)


	5. 12.03 coda

He doesn’t just flee to his room. He  _runs._

He would have slammed the door behind him but he doesn’t think he has the strength left. Figures. Can’t hold his family together, can’t hold  _himself_ together -

He feels his breath hitch painfully in his chest long before he even realizes that he’s crying.

He sits down on the bed. He doesn’t have anything left to do. He can’t even hear Sam’s footsteps in the hallway. Gone, gone, everyone’s gone, he’s all alone again, why does everybody keep  _leaving him?_

He doesn’t even pick up the phone. His breath just hitches again and he throws his head into his hands.

“Cas,” he sobs. And once the dam has broken, his shoulders start to shake in earnest.

Dean thinks that it’s possible he’s never felt pain like this before. His mother’s always been taken from him, never left him. She was safety and security and warmth. She was the star of Bethlehem that called him home, that called him back to himself. He’s stared at her photograph countless times and seen only love in her eyes.

But now she’s left him, too.

His legs have cramped something awful from sitting so long in this position by the time his bedroom door cracks open, but he falls pliantly into Castiel’s grip once he gets his arms around him.

“I came as soon as - Dean. Dean, it’s ok.”

Dean shakes his head, buries his face into Castiel’s chest. “She’s gone, she’s gone,” he keeps mumbling, in between bouts of tears. He’s distantly aware that he’s smearing the salt of them into Castiel’s thin shirt, but Castiel just holds on. He runs a hand through Dean’s hair, soothing and gentle just like he remembers his mom doing when he was -

So he cries and he cries and he cries, and he lets Castiel hold him. And he curls his hands into the lapels of Castiel’s suit jacket and his thighs quiver like he’s made of water.

“What did I do  _wrong_?” he whimpers. 

Castiel makes a sound like he’s halfway to sobbing himself. “Nothing,” he tells him. “Nothing, you did  _nothing_ wrong, it isn’t you,” he promises. He says it over and over and over again.

Castiel kisses the crown of Dean’s head and rubs his hands down his back. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry,” he says.

Eventually, Dean will tire himself out. He’ll lie back against the pillows and he will drag Castiel down with him. He’ll wake up sweating from a nightmare about his mom burning on the ceiling - one that he hasn’t had in years. He’ll still feel ice shards digging their way to the center of his heart, and remember that it was Mary’s hand sending them deeper.

_Everybody leaves me._

Castiel touches the back of his neck, and he feels a little steadier.

_But at least there’s someone that always comes back._


	6. 12.03 coda, part 2

It’s tough to open his eyes in the morning. They’re still a little puffy, and his mouth is too dry. But he’s warm and comfortable in his bed so for a second, he kind of forgets  _why_.

He rolls over onto his back, and the arm around his waist shifts a little.

“You’re still here,” Dean whispers, voice cracking. 

He remembers, now. Last night.

Castiel nods against his shoulder. “You needed me.”

Dean scoots a little closer. Sometime in the night he’d shed his jeans. “Thanks,” he murmurs.

Castiel kisses the bolt of his jaw - the first place he can reach - and Dean leans into it. He didn’t notice last night, but the signature trench coat is missing, and like Dean’s pants Castiel’s suit jacket has mysteriously relocated to the floor.

He nudges one of his bare legs up over Castiel’s hip and rolls, slotting them together front to front. He lowers himself down onto his elbows, hovering over Castiel’s chest, and tucks his nose against Castiel’s neck. Leaves a kiss there. 

He’s already hard. “Still need you,” he corrects.

Castiel smoothes his hands down Dean’s shoulders, feeling the flexing muscle under soft worn cotton. He sneaks one up under the hem, right in the small of Dean’s back. 

“Anything,” Castiel promises.

They don’t talk much after that, besides Dean’s devout and breathless litany of  _Cas Cas Cas Castiel_  and the angel’s answering groans. They move slowly but not gently, taking their time and pressed so tight together that when Dean’s orgasm finally hits he shakes hard enough with the force of it to knock their foreheads together. Castiel holds him through that, too.

When the stars stop dancing behind Dean’s eyes, he exhales against the hollow of Castiel’s throat. “I overreacted,” he says.

He can  _feel_ Castiel frown over the top of his head. “No, you didn’t.”

“Yes I did,” Dean says. He taps his fingers along the swell of Castiel’s bicep, showing even through the thin material of his wrinkled dress shirt. “It just… it just hurts, you know? It hurts when people leave like that. I thought she was the ONE person that would never…”

He cuts himself off, shakes his head. Castiel’s hands tighten in the material of his t-shirt.

Castiel is quiet for a moment before he speaks. Collecting his thoughts. Dean appreciates the honesty. He appreciates a lot of things about Cas being here right now. 

“Just because your mother has left the bunker, doesn’t mean that she won’t ever come back,” Castiel says carefully.

Dean nods. “Yeah, I know. Worked that much out for myself.”

“Every time  _I’ve_  left you,  _I’ve_  come back,” Castiel points out.

Dean hesitates, but nods again. “Yeah, you have,” he marvels.

Castiel readjusts their positions slightly. Dean goes where he puts him. “Mary and I have a lot in common, actually.”

Dean lifts his head, grimacing. “Dude,” he mutters, shifting his hips, still tacky. 

With a puff of breath that’s probably supposed to be a laugh, Castiel replies, “I only meant that we feel similarly about our situations sometimes. It was sort of nice to have someone around that understands.”

“Are you guys even friends?” Dean asks, remembering the gun shoved in Castiel’s face when he appeared. He hasn’t really been paying attention to the way that’s developed.

“I like to think so,” Castiel says, “though ‘friends’ might be a bit strong. She comes to me for advice sometimes. I can’t say I didn’t see this coming,” he admits.

Dean’s heart rate picks up and he shoves himself up onto his arms again. He’s kind of relieved that he can feel an emotion other than soul-penetrating sadness. There’s a kind of sick satisfaction in it. “You  _knew_? What, and you were just gonna keep letting me make a fool of myself, falling all over her like that,  _knowing_  she’d pick up and leave?” he growls.

Castiel frowns at him. “Dean, it isn’t a bad thing that you love your mother. Her choosing to spend time with herself doesn’t reflect poorly on you.”

Dean huffs, carried off by the anger. “Of course it does! I didn’t listen to her. I was so excited to have her here that I just - you know I’ve actually been disappointed?” he admits. “Yeah! She’s not quite what I thought I remembered, and every new thing I learn about her is something I’d never expect! I really don’t know her as well as I thought I did.”

Castiel returns to making soothing patterns in the back of his t-shirt. “Then maybe you could benefit from this time apart as well,” he supposes. 

Dean blinks. Huh. Never thought of it that way. Maybe that would actually help? He’s been confident this whole time that he would just get over it, but maybe Winchesters really aren’t meant to work that way. Maybe he does need time to iron out the kinks and accept where they stand.

But he really doesn’t know where to start?

“How do you -” he snaps his mouth shut, and reconsiders the question he wants to ask.

“How do you make it hurt less,” Dean asks, “when someone leaves? Like, you think there’s a chance they’ll come back, but it still… How do you get over it?”

He doubts Castiel will know, so he tacks on, “Because I think it affects the way I - my… relationships.” Fuck you guys, he can be self-aware too. “I’m always waiting for someone to leave and I’m afraid of getting hurt, so I don’t -”

He’s wrong about Cas not having an answer. Castiel smiles at him, gently and compassionately, like he knows exactly what Dean’s talking about. Hell, maybe he does. “You trust them. You believe them when they tell you that they love you.”

Dean swallows. “How did you know that she said - ?”

“I told you,” Castiel murmurs, arching up to kiss Dean’s chin. “Mary and I are very similar. We both like beef jerky and we both love you very much.”

Dean laughs, but the sound is a little wet. “So you really think she’ll be back?”

“Of course,” he says. Castiel’s eyes narrow. “I could, ah. Speak with her, if you’d like. Though I’m not sure she’d want to see me.”

Dean shakes his head. “We’re following her pace, here. When she wants to talk, we’ll talk. I can wait.”

“Are you sure?”

“Best things are worth waiting for,” Dean says, kissing Castiel’s nose. Cas wrinkles it. 

“But not coffee,” Dean decides, rolling off of him and onto his feet. “You want any, sunshine?”

Castiel smiles to himself while Dean drapes his robe over his shoulders. “If you’re offering.”

Dean smiles too, and even though it’s still a little tight around the edges and his eyes are still a little red, it’s a damn sight better than last night’s breakdown. 

“No problem,” he promises. 

He smoothes back Castiel’s hair with his hand and kisses his forehead first, then his lips. He hesitates there for a moment, and Castiel just listens to him breathe, to the regular beating of his heart.

“I love you,” he says.

Castiel’s breath hitches.

Dean has never said that so directly before. There have been other ways,between the ‘I need you’s’ and ‘You’re family’s.’ There have been snatches of it in dark motel rooms, forced out in a gasp like a dirty secret as blunt nails claw into skin, there and gone in an instant. It’s in his eyes, too, when they look at each other. But he’s never just… come out and said it before, just like that. And Cas thought he knew why.

“You trust me enough to say that now?” Castiel asks.

Dean nods once, resolutely. “I’m working on it,” he says. “The trust thing. The whole… love thing. Like you said: you always come back. Plus, I want  _you_ to know that if _I’m_  gone…”

Castiel looks up, and his smile only widens when Dean fidgets there beside the bed, uncomfortably avoiding eye contact. 

It’s a step in the right direction, at least.

“I would like cream and sugar in my coffee today, thank you,” Castiel tells him. “Also, I love you.”

Dean’s cheeks pink and he nods, scraping a hand self-consciously through his messy hair. “Yep, thanks. Ok. I’ll be back,” he mumbles, before bumping into the side table. He reaches out to steady it and then hisses when he touches his bruised hip. “Ok,” he repeats, fleeing the room.

They’re going to be fine. Dean will need a little extra TLC over the next few days, but it looks like he really does get what Castiel’s been trying to tell him. This won’t break him, not really.

Castiel reaches for his phone on the other nightstand, the one on his side, and sees that he has a new text message.

_I’m sorry,_ it says.  _Please understand. And help my boys. Dean didn’t take it very well._

She really is worried about hurting them. Castiel does admire her, in a way, for what she’s done. Too often do Winchesters suffer in silence, soldier on without closure and without knowing themselves. Yet Mary’s chosen to step away, to work on herself because she deserves to feel comfortable and she deserves to enjoy these new moments without being tied up by the old. It’s a confident, tough decision to make but it isn’t selfish, not at all.

_I’ll look after them,_ he promises her.  _He’ll be ok. Good luck._

He doesn’t get an immediate response, so he puts his phone back down. He unbuttons his shirt fully and tosses it away, reaching for one of Dean’s t-shirts instead, draped over the desk chair.

Since Lucifer is still at large, Castiel will have to leave again. That’s unavoidable. He’s got that old bloodthirsty taste in his mouth, the one that he was intimately familiar with during his time as a solider of heaven.  _A dog with a scent_ , Crowley had called him in the car. It’s true that he’s anxious to get moving again, to finish this once and for all, but…

But family comes first. This is where he is needed most, right now.

Maybe he was wrong, talking to Mary earlier. Maybe he does belong here, just as much as she does.

“Cas! Coffee!” he hears.

All his love is here. He can’t imagine being anywhere else.


	7. 12.04 coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because FUCK YOU, that's why.

Her breath doesn’t even stir the dust at her feet. She holds it, and holds it, until she hears the kickstart of a raucous engine that eventually fades into nothing. Until there is nothing in the air but mist and cicada song.

It was like a reflex - she held the bullet right in front of her heart like she held the knife above her mother’s chest. Its point dug into her sweater, grazed the skin enough to bleed, to bruise, but it wouldn’t break her. She should have stayed in the basement. At least she knew what to expect down there. She had less than a second to react to this new kind of threat and the truth of it was that she got lucky just now.

When the man in black’s murderous thoughts have faded into nothing, she picks herself up off the floor and dusts herself off. She picks the tiny bullets out of her sweater and hurriedly dumps them into the trashcan with shaking fingers. That’s when her knees start to buckle.

Her phone is by her ear before she even remembers taking it out. (Old habits really do die hard - she’s always been quick with one of these. Just like riding a bike.)

“Sam?” she croaks.

“Hey! Hey, hold on,” a gentle voice says back. She already feels a little calmer. There’s some rustling and a low murmur in the background, but Sam is back on the line in the next instant. “Where are you, are you ok?”

Magda shakes her head. She’s starting to hyperventilate a little. “I just got shot.”

“What?” Sam yells.

She takes a few more deep breaths and paces around the bathroom. Then she thinks better of it and shuts herself up in a stall. She creeps up on top of the toilet and tucks her knees underneath her chin. The bathroom is empty except for her.

She shuts her eyes. Her back aches from carrying her backpack on her shoulders, reclining against the bus seat, rubbing up against old wounds. 

“Magda?” Sam calls, voice quivering with fear like it had in the dining room.

“I’m not hurt,” she tells him. “But he’s coming after you next. I heard him.”

Sam hesitates. “Who?” he asks. 

Magda sighs. Tries to straighten her back a little so the scabs don’t peel. “I don’t know. But he has a tattoo on his hand. A cross. Clean shaven. Really… evil thoughts,” she says, shaking her head.

It was sort of like peering into her mother’s brain all over again.  _Eliminate difference, destroy the unnatural._ A lot less prayer and penance, though. Less anger, more cold. Frigid, clear, to the point of machination. Same cleanliness. Same obsessiveness.

Sam makes a small noise on the other line. “Ok, well. Thanks for the tip, Magda. We’ll keep an eye out, ok? Now where are you? Did you miss your bus?”

Magda puts her phone against her chest and listens. There’s nothing out there making sounds except the bugs, and she can’t hear any other ‘voices’ but Sam’s.

She puts the phone back to her ear. “No,” she sighs, the sound coming out cracked and wet. “I’m still in the…”

She can’t help it. She starts to cry. A small part of her registers the sound of all of the faucets turning on outside the door. The pipes cry with her. She’s making them do that. She’s projecting again. Stop that, stop that,  _be gone Devil_ -

“Magda, Magda, hey,” says Sam’s tinny voice.

She cries. She hugs her knees together and tries not to let her feet dip into the toilet water and she cries. Her breath hitches and it hurts her bruised chest. Her pitching pulls at the wounds between her shoulders. She hasn’t cried in a long time, not for anyone or anything. 

“I hate him,” she hisses, weak and pathetic.

“The man that did this to you? Yeah, I know, but I think I know who he’s working for. We’ll take him down, I promise.”

“No,” Magda growls. The faucets run faster. Some water drips on the floor, washes away the dots of her blood. “ _God_.”

And just like that, the bathroom goes silent again. The water stops running.

Sam doesn’t respond, at least not right away. She gets her breathing under control and she relaxes her posture and she’s about to apologize for the outburst when -

“I know how you feel.”

Her breath catches, and then leaves her all at once.  _I know you do,_ she thinks to herself. 

This is not a hurt that Sam can heal. There is no ointment or bandage for these scars that run deep inside her. She is afraid to go to sleep tonight, haunted by the color of her father’s face as he choked to death at the table, eerily similar to the color of the stain on her brother’s shirt when he jumped on a knife for her. She feels the hot burn of candlelight on her face every time she closes her eyes, and she thinks of them.

Sam can’t make her peace with God for her. 

But he does the next best thing, really. He calls a good friend, one Jody Mills, on his brother’s phone while he’s still on the line with her, and personally assures Magda that she’ll have a safe ride to California.

“It’s beautiful there this time of year,” he says. “I still remember it.”

“You lived there too?” she asks, quietly. It doesn’t seem real that he could have all of this in common with her. She might be a little bit in love with him, but no one needs to know that.

“I went to school there,” Sam admits with a nervous laugh. “Back when I was still psychic, like you.”

“And look at you now,” Magda says, smiling, heart fond.

Sam doesn’t say anything for a long time. She’s worried that she might have said something wrong.

“Yeah,” he says, lighthearted and honest. “I guess I did ok.”

They share goodbyes, well wishes, and promises to stay in touch, and then they hang up their phones.

Magda turns the block of plastic in her hands a few times. It’s still so weird to have a cell phone again. It makes her a little sick to hold one. But it’s a necessary evil, maybe. Like her? No, she doesn’t have to think that way anymore.

She hides the phone away in a pocket of her backpack, wipes the tears from her face, and stands up. She carefully opens the stall door, and steps out into the bathroom. The lights flicker above her.

Guiltily, she mops up some of the water still dripping off the sinks with some paper towels. “Sorry,” she whispers to them. She’ll collect her thoughts and compose a more coherent text to Sam tomorrow. She’s gotten very good at remembering faces over the years. She can do this for him. She can try to save him like he saved her.

She goes outside to wait for Jody, singing under her breath.


	8. 12.04 additional scene

Beth - a real go-getter - does blush a little when she hands over her business card with a personal number scrawled on the back. “You know,” she says. “If you ever want to learn more about Wicca sometime.”

Dean takes it, and laughs. “‘Preciate it, Beth, but I’m married.”

Dean blanches at the same time Beth does. 

_Married???_

“Oh, god. I’m sorry. That’s - well, yeah, the offer still stands? I guess? Crap,” she mutters.

They part awkward friends, and Dean runs back to Sam with his tail between his legs.

_Married, god dammit, where the hell had that even COME FROM?_

His phone chirps almost as soon as he shuts the Impala’s door and settles into the driver’s seat. He checks the caller ID. 

Cas.

_Oh, right,_ Dean thinks with a smile, smoothing his thumb over the screen. _That’s where that came from._

“Hey, sunshine,” he answers.


	9. 12.05 coda

Crowley flicks up the collar of his coat and whistles from between his teeth. “Ooh,” he cries. “I love this song!”

Castiel’s expression does not change as Crowley grabs Castiel’s phone from where it sits on the center console and slides the home screen open, keying in the passcode with practiced ease. He opens Pandora and drags the volume bar all the way up, snapping his fingers and bobbing his head.

Castiel’s hands tighten infinitesimally on the wheel.

“You played this song five times this morning,” Castiel growls. “In a row.”

Crowley either doesn’t hear him or chooses to ignore the remark.

“Pussycat, pussycat, I’ve got flowers! And lots of hours to spend time with – oh.”

Crowley cuts off his own enthusiastic singing and suddenly goes ramrod straight in his seat. It’s the most serious that Castiel has seen him on this trip so far.

“Have to go,” he says. “Won’t be a jiff.” And then he blinks out of existence beside him.

He takes Castiel’s phone with him, so the truck’s cabin is blessedly quiet. Castiel blows out a long breath and leans back against the seat. He’ll savor this for as long as he can.

Every minute of this farcical road trip has been utter agony, and that’s not a dramatization. Crowley is obnoxiously and unjustly comfortable in Castiel’s space – he’s dismissive of boundaries, messy, loud… he also leaves fast food wrappers in the foot well, touches everything on the dashboard, and offers unnecessary input on Castiel’s driving. If it weren’t for his incredible healing abilities, Castiel is sure that he would have ground all his teeth down to dust by now.

But, as much as he hates to admit it, Castiel needs him. It is enormously easier to work with a partner and, more than that, now he’s got something to use as a shield if it comes to a fistfight with Lucifer.

Crowley pops back into the car far, far too soon for Castiel’s liking. He wipes some invisible dirt from his shoulder and sighs happily. “Some old friends of mine have finally dropped down to Hell today,” he says.

“I don’t care,” Castiel grumbles.

“The Fuhrer’s soul has at last come home,” Crowley elaborates anyway. “Good man, very ambitious. Charismatic, too. That’s important in a leader.” His gaze turns shrewd and considering.

Castiel rolls his eyes skyward. “You can’t make Hitler your new campaign manager,” he sighs.

Crowley looks offended. “Why not? If I’m going to retake the throne, I’ll need new management.”

Castiel just scoffs. He honestly would have preferred the music.

His phone starts to ring in Crowley’s hand, and Crowley jumps. “What is that?” he blurts, alarmed.

Castiel checks the dashboard clock. 8:00pm already? “It’s my alarm,” he says, holding his hand out in Crowley’s direction. “Give me my phone.”

“Both hands on the wheel,” Crowley hisses, guarding the phone closer to his chest.

“Crowley,” Castiel growls, insistently shoving his hand under his nose.

Crowley squints at him. “Why do you want it so bad, anyway? What’s the alarm for?”

“Nothing,” Castiel says too quickly. “Just hand it over. You can play music from the radio.”

Crowley considers this, and then hands over the phone with a smarmy twinkle in his eye that can only mean he’s up to no good.

Castiel silences the alarm with one hand and taps a few buttons on the screen. “I’m going to pull over at the next gas station,” Castiel announces.

Crowley shrugs. “Alright. You better buy me some bugles.”

“I will do no such thing,” Castiel retorts. He tucks the phone safely into his front pocket and returns his hands to the steering wheel while Crowley sulks.

 

Crowley has popped inside the gas station to pilfer snacks and terrorize the general public, so Castiel leans unobtrusively against the driver’s side door as the gas tank fills up. In this quick moment of peace and quiet, he has time to thumb open FaceTime.

“Hey!” Dean’s voice crackles to life through the phone’s speaker, turned all the way up from Crowley’s earlier jam session. His face is stretched into a wide grin, and he’s got a fork lifted halfway to his mouth. Castiel doesn’t turn down the volume; he’s missed Dean too much to deprive himself of listening.

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel says, feeling a bit silly holding his phone out like this in front of himself. “Can you see me?”

“Yeah, buddy, I can see you,” Dean assures him. “Say hi to Sam.”

Sam’s large hand and half his head pops onto the screen. “Hey, Cas,” he greets.

“Hi, Sam,” Castiel says, eyes going soft.

He can already feel some of the tension leaking out of his shoulders, and the faint stirrings of a headache that had been building in the car now ebb away. He can be with his family at the end of the day just like anybody else, any other man away for business.

“I’m sorry I’m late – I hadn’t realized the time.”

Dean shoves Sam out of frame with a scowl. “‘S okay, Cas. You’re here now, right?” He clears his throat and picks up his phone, cheeks reddening a little in the washed out light of the bunker’s kitchen. Dean then strategically moves out of the kitchen, balancing something in his other hand.

“How’s the hunt going?” Dean asks, striding down the long hallways of the bunker.

Castiel sighs and slumps against the truck. “It’s frustrating. Lucifer is supposedly still trapped at the bottom of the ocean, and we don’t have much of a plan yet to banish him back to the pit.”

Dean laughs before Castiel can continue the rest of his thought. “Time to break out the scuba gear, huh?”

Castiel laughs quietly. “Rowena severely weakened his vessel – he’ll be needing a new one soon, so we plan to set up an outpost along the coastline to watch for signs of movement.”

Dean chokes. “What if he comes back as, like, a shark or something?”

With a tilt of the head, Castiel shrugs. “He very well might while he recovers. But I don’t think Lucifer will be satisfied with being a shark for very long. They’re not very mobile on land.”

Dean opens his mouth to say something again, this time at the door of his bedroom, and Castiel interrupts him. “While I appreciate the concern, you know I didn’t call to talk about Lucifer,” he says quietly, which shuts Dean up real quick. “How are you, Dean?”

Dean reaches down to open his door, so Castiel gets an up-close view of the floor for a minute while Dean turns the knob. “Dude. I’m fantastic. You ready for this? I killed Hitler. THE Hitler.”

Castiel nods. “Ah. Yes, Crowley mentioned something about seeing him again. Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” Dean replies. The quiet click of the door closing is punctuated by the satisfied sigh Dean makes as he settles into his bed, back against the pillows and with a metal tin positioned carefully on his chest.

“What are you eating?”

“Pie,” Dean replies happily.

Castiel smiles. “Sounds like you’ve had a good day,” he prods, gently.

Dean halts his chewing, a hesitation so brief someone that didn’t know him as well as Castiel might have missed it. “Yeah, I guess,” he says, swallowing. He smirks a little. “Good as you can get in this line of work.”

Castiel readjusts against the door of the truck. It’s getting colder out now that the sun has set, and Castiel can feel the ice of the metal bleeding through his coat.

“Where are you now, anyway?” Dean asks.

“East,” is all Castiel says.

Dean thins his lips. “So not close enough to –”

He shakes his head.

Castiel sags. “It will be a while before I can come home, I think.”

God, he’s never hated FaceTime so much. These scheduled calls were supposed to make Dean feel better about being so far apart, but all it’s done is fan the simmering flames of longing and regret in Castiel’s chest. He just wants to reach through the screen and –

“It’s ok,” Dean says. And the miracle is: he looks like he means it. His eyes are sad, but there are no lies hovering behind them.

Castiel squints. “It is?” He frowns. “But with everything that’s happened with your mother…”

 _One more person leaving you,_ he worries.

Dean makes an effort to smile. “You know, I’ve been doing some thinking,” he grunts, rolling over onto his side and curling the pie tin close to his chest. The camera bounces a little as Dean readjusts it on the bed. Castiel can see the weapons lined up along the walls, gathering dust.

“A dangerous past time, to be sure,” Castiel comments. He unhooks the gas pump from the truck and inserts one of his credit cards.

“Shut up,” Dean says, though he does so with a smile. “I’m serious. Families, I mean. Even normal ones spend time apart. And I get where she’s coming from. Whenever you – she. Whenever  _she_  can come home is all right with me. ‘S not like we’re going anywhere.”

Dean nods, and clumsily tries to eat another forkful of pie in this new position. Castiel is still trying to parse out Dean’s feelings as he removes and pockets his credit card.

He does feel this distant ache from him – longing for a complete family, a full home, that hasn’t changed – but the feeling isn’t tinged with the bitterness of rejection, or laced with the sharp edge of hopelessness. Dean’s hurting, but not desperately so. Not so much that it makes Castiel feel guilty being away from him for so long.

“That’s… very emotionally mature of you,” he says, leaning back against the truck’s door again.

Dean grins at him with full cheeks. “Yeah, well. Better late than never.”

Castiel smiles at him, and Dean points at the screen with his fork. “Your hair’s sticking up a little,” he observes.

Castiel straightens up and pats down self-consciously on the side of his head. “Thank you. It’s the stress. Crowley is driving me crazy.”

Dean laughs and slides the pie tin out of frame. “He better not be replacing me as copilot.”

“Nobody could do that,” Castiel assures him. “I miss you,” he admits.

Dean sinks into the sheets. “I miss you too,” he confesses quietly. “A lot.”

They breathe together in tandem for a minute, blinking at each other like the old days. Castiel looks over every small detail in Dean’s face, from new freckles that have popped up in the sun to dark circles that really aren’t so dark anymore under his eyes. Dean looks like he’s doing the exact same thing to Castiel – what does he find in his face? The soft gray at his temples, the worried lines by his eyes? Both of them, older and tired and missing the other.

“Hey,” Dean murmurs, almost in a whisper. “When you get home, for real this time, there’s something I want to… something I want to ask you,” he says.

Castiel’s heart thumps painfully in his chest with human want. “You could just ask me now.”

Dean looks like he’s considering it, but when he opens his mouth next he’s interrupted.

“Is that Dean I heard?” Crowley asks, appearing at Castiel’s side.

Castiel jumps.

“Well isn’t that darling,” Crowley purrs, waving at the screen.

The moment is ruined then as Dean rolls his eyes. He straightens up off the bed again, no longer comfortable. “Fuck off, Crowley,” he grumbles. “You keep Cas all in one piece, you son of a bitch. Got that?”

“Yes, yes, fine, love you too. Give the moose my best,” he fires back.

Dean makes a noise of disgust and picks up the discarded pie tin. “I’ll talk to you soon, buddy,” he says to Castiel. “Ok?”

Castiel tries not to let his disappointment show. “Ok. Sleep well, Dean.”

That coaxes another smile out of him. “Yeah. Drive safe.”

They hang up, and Castiel turns very, veeery slowly in Crowley’s direction. The douchebag is smiling all innocently, gently swinging a plastic bag between his hands. 

“You couldn’t let me have one moment,” Castiel sighs. “Just one.”

Crowley shrugs and rounds the front of the truck, reaching for the door. “If I didn’t cut in when I did, you would have nothing to long for,” he explains. “I was actually doing you a favor.”

“Ugh,” Castiel groans, opening his own door. “You’re insufferable. I can’t wait until this is over and I finally get to kill you.”

Crowley tsks. “Cheer up, Cas. Look,” he says, reaching into the bag.

He pulls out a bag of pork rinds. “I got you a snack. Forgive me?”

Castiel snatches the bag out of Crowley’s stubby hands and tears it open. “No,” he mumbles, through a handful of chips.

Crowley shrugs like it’s of no concern to him anyway, and then they’re back on the road.

It’s funny. Even though Castiel feels like he’s driving further and further away from home, he’s taking a few steps closer at the same time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can read more of my projected Crowstiel road trip adventures in my pre-season fic called ["embrace the point of no return"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7921204)


	10. 12.06 coda

Tim Hortons is no Biggerson’s. But the menu promises that the breakfast sandwiches are hot and that they come with bacon and that’s about all Dean can ask for right now. 

He does almost have a heart attack when Sam leans over to whisper, “Make sure it’s not  _Canadian_ bacon. We’re in  _Canada_.”

He flags down the girl at the counter and explains, in explicit detail, how he would like his bacon cooked.

Jody and Mary are still waiting in the car. The four of them decide to eat there, away from the noise and civilians. The somber mood of the funeral has still carried over somewhat, and admittedly Dean’s finding it a little hard to choke down bacon after smelling burning flesh all morning.

“So, I got there kind of late,” Mary says through a mouthful of biscuit - apparently not plagued by the same loss of appetite that Dean is. “What were the other hunters like, anyway?”

Sam cringes. “They were a little… invasive, honestly.”

Dean scoffs. “Yeah. They sure as hell knew who we were. Some of ‘em had some pretty strong opinions.”

Mary frowns and takes a sip of coffee. “Yeah?”

Jody pipes up from the backseat. “To be fair, there is an entire book series written about you two.”

“You found those?” Sam groans.

“Book series?” Mary asks, interested.

Jody nods enthusiastically. “Found a few copies hidden away in Bobby’s house.”

Sam waves his hand dismissively. “Well you’d wonder why I got asked so much if I really was possessed by Lucifer. It’s in the books, isn’t it?” he gripes, tearing into his sandwich like it’s offended him.

Dean laughs once, sharp. “Two guys got in an argument over how many times I died in the last ten years. Can’t really blame ‘em - the books stop after Stull. I’ve died like three times  _at least_  since then.”

Sam leans forward in the backseat so that his chin is practically resting on Dean’s shoulder, eyes narrowed. “I don’t think it’s three,” he argues.

Dean shrugs. “We could ask Billie,” he mutters. “She’s probably got a whiteboard hung up somewhere in heaven with tally marks.” 

“She scares me,” Jody says, shivering.

“You and me both, sister,” Dean mumbles.

Sam laughs. “Oh yeah, speaking of angels: somebody told me last night that they were Castiel’s number one fan.”

“What?” Dean blurts.

“What?” Mary laughs. Jody blinks.

Sam grins, playfully wicked, eyes fixed on the side of Dean’s head. “Oh yeah. Lady hunter. A  _friend_  of Asa’s. She’s got a weakness for dark hair and dangerous, she said. Wanted to know if the angel Castiel really is as intimidating as everyone says.”

Dean’s face goes bright red, all the way up to his ears, and he knows Sam can see even though he ducks his head to take a hefty bite of his sandwich. 

“She also wanted to know if he was single,” Sam adds.

“Ok,” Dean grumbles, opening the car door. “That’s enough,” he continues, fleeing the scene as Mary and Jody giggle to themselves. Dean collects the trash on his side of the car and heads for a trash can on the other side of the parking lot, head down and fingers twitching.

Sam watches him go and leans conspiratorially towards Mary. “I wouldn’t tease him so much if he didn’t react like he does,” he admits.

Mary fights back a grin. “Maybe I was too hasty. Maybe you two really  _are_ still the children I left behind.”

Sam laughs and takes a sip of his smoothie, watching his brother linger outside. He can see him tracing the shape of his cellphone through the pocket of his jacket.

“How  _is_ Castiel?” Mary asks suddenly.

“Yeah,” Jody murmurs contemplatively. “I haven’t seen him since you guys stopped to check in on Claire not too long ago.”

Sam blinks. “Um. He’s. Fine? I guess? Dean would have said something if he were in trouble.”

Mary takes another bite of her sandwich. “They speak regularly, then.”

Sam shrugs. “Yeah. Dean’s a worrier. You know.”

Jody rolls her eyes, but it goes unnoticed. “I haven’t noticed that Claire’s been upset about anything out of the ordinary,” she chimes in. “I’m sure she’d say something if Cas had suddenly stopped harassing her online.”

Sam turns towards her more. “How’s that going? Claire and Cas. Do you know anything?”

Jody sighs. “About as well as  _that’s_  going, I think,” she says, pointing out the window to Dean.

“What do you mean?” Mary asks.

Neither Jody nor Sam pipes up right away, so Mary says, “Sorry. I’m still not quite caught up yet. Did I miss something?”

Sam clears his throat. It’s awkward. Jody isn’t meeting Mary’s eyes. “Well, it’s just. Uh,” Sam says, reaching for words. “Have you ever watched Dean with Cas before? Like, really watched them?”

Mary thinks back to the bunker, to the car rides, to the little gestures she might have observed between the two of them. She remembers The Hug. 

“Sure,” she says.

Sam splays his hands. “Well, their relationship is…“ He looks to Jody, lost.

“Complicated,” Jody supplies.

Sam nods.

Mary stares. “Complicated,” she repeats, skeptically. “That sounds like something out of a romcom.”

Jody and Sam share another look. “We just like to tease him about it. It’s no big deal,” Sam is quick to say.

Mary doesn’t get a chance to reply before Dean’s marching back to the car with big, powerful strides and his shoulders squared like he’s ready for a fight. Sam leans back into his seat, non-threatening, and smiles at Dean in the rearview when he comes back.

“You get enough to eat, Sasquatch?” he asks, gruff and with his eyes down.

Sam nods. “I think I’m set. Mom, Jody?”

“I’m good,” Jody volunteers.

Mary chews for a moment more with narrowed eyes. She turns to consider Dean, breakfast sandwich squeezed tight between both hands.

“I don’t know,” she admits. “I could really go for something sweet,” she says.

Dean blinks, thrown. “I can run back in and see if they’ve got any donuts. How’s that sound?”

A little twinkle in her eyes is all the warning he gets before Mary comes out with, “You know what goes really well with coffee?” she asks him.

“What?”

Mary smirks a little. “Angel food cake.”

Sam tries unsuccessfully to hide his laugh in the sleeve of his coat while his brother - yet again - blushes so hard his freckles stand out and grumbles something like _everyone in this family’s against me._

They’re not perfect, but Mary’s not an idiot. She knows that if anyone else had made a jab like she just did, Dean would probably put his fist through their face. The fact that he just turns the key in the ignition and sinks into his seat is largely why she told Billie to fuck off this morning.

There’s still hope for them. They can be a family that laughs together, that jokes with each other, she thinks. Maybe. Some day.

Some day she can be a part of a family that includes this other mom Jody, and also Castiel. That sounds pretty nice, actually. Maybe she won’t feel so lonely then.

“So where are we dropping you off?” Dean asks. The blush has receded somewhat. Mary knows that he’s talking to her even though he doesn’t look her way.

“Back at the Fox house,” she requests.

But it won’t be for long.

Dean puts the car in park in the driveway when they arrive, but he doesn’t get out when Sam, Mary, and Jody do. Mary swaps hugs with everyone but him, looking sullenly at the center emblem of the steering wheel and trying his very best not to look like he’s sulking. Sam uncomfortably shuffles his feet, and Mary smiles at him. 

“Could you give me a minute?” she asks.

Sam takes Jody by the elbow and they dart away to check out the ivy crawling along the house. Mary watches them go and shakes her head, marveling at the good, sensitive man her youngest son has grown up to be.

As for her eldest…

“Hey,” she says, into the open driver’s side window.

Dean looks up only for a second, then looks back down again. “Hey. You need something?” he asks.

Mary tries to smile. “I just wanted to thank you again for coming in and saving us last night. That was really brave of you.”

Dean shrugs, and says nothing.

Not for the first time, Mary has the impulse to reach out and touch him, run her fingers through his hair to calm him like she would for her baby, but she knows that this Dean would only flinch away. “I wasn’t kidding earlier,” she says, in a lighter voice. “Angel food cake really does go well with coffee.”

Dean scoffs, but indiscreetly eyes his half-drunk cup of coffee sitting in the cup holder.

She smiles as encouragingly as she knows how. “You should give yours a call.”

Dean purses his lips like he wants to argue, but he does eventually nod. He looks up to meet her gaze, finally. “I’ll do that,” he says. 

“Good.”

Dean clears his throat. “You drive safe,” he says.

Mary smiles. “You too. I love you, Dean.”

Dean ducks his head again. “Uh huh.”

“Talk soon.”

“Ok.”

Mary taps the top of the Impala with her knuckles, and takes her time walking back to her car.

Yeah. They’re going to be ok.


	11. 12.07 coda

Sam isn’t much up for talking after tonight. That’s cool, it’s understandable. That move with the door earlier was pretty sweet, so Dean lets him have the space he needs. He’s been a little touchy lately anyway.

While Sam takes a lap to burn off some steam, Dean looks over at Castiel.

Crowley rocks back on his heels. “Well. I’m going to go… find some ice. For the eye,” he mumbles, and then he shuffles away.

“You sure you’re ok?” Dean asks, once he’s sure that Crowley’s gone.

Castiel’s shoulders sag. He rubs at his eyes. “Sure.”

Dean reaches out to grab Castiel’s elbow, before he thinks better of it and shoves his hand into his pocket instead. Castiel’s got a bloodstain on the collar of his coat. Dean nods at it. “That’ll come out, right?”

“I don’t know, Dean,” Castiel sighs.

Dean scowls. “Alright, fine, be a bitch about it,” he grumbles.

“Can we not do that tonight?” The request is weary and sad, but totally heartfelt. No more fighting,  _please_. The cut on his cheek drips sluggishly still.

Dean shakes the tension out of his shoulders. “Sorry, I’m sorry. We’re all strung a little tight right now.”

Castiel reaches up to touch the edge of his collar and winces when his fingers meet blood. He starts pulling his arms out of the sleeves. “I know. I’m sorry I called you a lumberjack.”

That startles a little laugh out of Dean. “Yeah, not your best insult. I’m sorry I called you a third tier agent.” He looks up to meet Castiel’s eyes. “And I’m sorry about Tommy.”

Castiel is halfway out of his coat, and he pauses in inspecting the bloodstain to look back at Dean. “He had two daughters in college,” he says mournfully.

Dean nods. “Pretty sure we can squeeze something out of Vince’s bank account for them. Won’t bring their dad back but, hey. It’s something.”

Castiel gets a far-off look in his eyes. “Yes, that would be nice,” he muses, absentmindedly folding his coat. His hand drags over the wrinkled surface.  _Does he hand iron that thing?_  Dean wonders.  _Will he wash it himself later tonight?_

Seeing Castiel stand there in just his white shirt and his askew tie, profile lit up by the loud ambulance lights, he looks smaller somehow. Angels don’t get cold, but Castiel hasn’t been much of an angel lately anyway. Dean’s hands fly out of his pockets before he really even knows what he’s doing, and he slides out of his own jacket.

“Here,” he says, holding it out to Castiel. “This is still pretty clean.”

Castiel studies it for a moment. He reaches out to grasp the collar, and brushes just the tips of his fingers against Dean’s. 

“Thank you,” he says.

Dean nods, but he doesn’t move away. He takes one step closer and reaches up to wipe at the cut on Castiel’s cheek. 

“You gotta stop with this,” he murmurs, nearly in a whisper. Castiel tries to turn his head and Dean won’t let him, swerves to hold his gaze. “I mean it. The self-sacrifice thing. I hate it.”

Castiel flinches back from Dean’s touch and grits his teeth. “Ok,” he replies, and Dean knows he’s done listening. What is it with this family and miscommunications?

Dean steps back with a sigh and dutifully holds Castiel’s folded, bloody trench coat for him as he struggles into Dean’s leather jacket. It’s a bit tight in some places, too loose in others. He rolls his shoulders once and shakes his hands free of the sleeves. “How do I look?”

“Not bad, actually,” Dean appraises. “All that’s missing are the sunglasses,” he jokes.

Castiel frowns and tilts his head. “It’s night time. Why would I be wearing sunglasses?”

“It’s an LA thing,” Dean promises. He tucks the trench coat under his arm and takes a deep breath. “Come on. We have to get going before people start asking us questions.”

Castiel shrugs. The leather ripples beautifully down his arms. With his hair artfully tussled like that after a fight, roughed up and a little dirty… damn. Dean really shouldn’t have offered him the jacket. “Your faces are probably all over Instagram by now,” Castiel tells him. “People were taking pictures and video before the show started.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Stupid freaking kids with their selfie sticks and their Instagrams and their - hey, do you play Words with Friends?”

He throws his free arm over Castiel’s shoulder and guides him to the other side of the Impala, all the while trying not to think about what Lucifer said inside.

He just doesn’t get it. _He did it for love,_ Dean marvels to himself. Lucifer, the proudest angel.  _He loved one thing so much that never loved him back. That was enough to make him totally lose it. He would throw away everything for that. He just wants to be loved._

He looks at Castiel again. 

His lips are moving but Dean can’t hear the words coming out of them. His feet won’t move. He ends up standing still in the middle of the street.

Castiel stops with him. Frowns at him. “Dean?”

The breath sweeps out of him like he got punched in the gut. There are goosebumps up and down Dean’s bare arms.

He blinks at Castiel’s sorry, concerned eyes. There are bags under them, and a profound sadness that he can’t quite hold back. It’s been there for a long time; Dean can’t even remember the last time that he looked into Castiel’s eyes and didn’t see anything there that could make him feel guilty. He has so much to atone for, they have  _got_ to fix themselves if they really want to make it out of this crazy fight alive together, and now he finally has an idea of how to start - 

“I love you,” he says.

Castiel’s eyes widen. “Yes, I know,” he’s quick to say.

“Do you?” Dean asks, taking two quick steps forward. It puts them almost nose to nose, and there’s something unpredictable hovering between them. Explosive, even. “Are you sure?”

Castiel’s eyes drop, and that’s enough of an answer.

Dean dips his head and kisses the corner of Castiel’s mouth. Softly, respectfully, in a way that makes it so the gesture can’t be mistaken for anything but what it is.

“I love you,” he says again. This time, with feeling.

Castiel closes his eyes. He knocks his forehead against Dean’s and reaches for his free hand. “And I you,” he promises. “You know that.” Dean nods.

They stand there, swinging their joined hands in the flashing red lights and grasping for some semblance of control. 

“Ahem.”

Dean springs backwards, clearing his throat. His hand is a little sweaty from where Castiel was holding on to it.

Crowley looks all too amused from where he stands on the sidewalk. He’s holding an ice pack to his swollen face. It’s ridiculous.

“Shall we go?” he asks, almost cheerfully, as he pulls open the Impala’s backseat door.

Dean clenches his jaw. “I can see what you mean about him talking too much.”

“I want to kill him,” Castiel mutters darkly.

“You’ll get your chance,” Dean assures him. The moment’s over, so he yanks open the driver’s side door and slides into the car, tossing Castiel’s coat on the passenger seat. 

They’ve got their work cut out for them. Between the BMOL, the Darkness, Lucifer… the world seems intent on tearing them apart in any way that it can. And maybe that’s just life. Maybe everything really is meaningless just like Lucifer said. All Dean knows is that to make it through to the next day, they have got to find something to hold on to, to come back to and fight for.

They’ll find it in each other.


	12. 12.08 additional scene

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This plot point didn't end up coming into play in season 12, but I thought it was a great possible tie-in!

She can’t go back to her job. She can’t look into those eyes again without seeing flashing red, even if they’re set in the face of the man she loves. (Still loves, of course.) She can’t let them find her either. They want to take her baby. Castiel had made it very clear what she is. But this child is hers and she  _wants it_ and it deserves a chance at a life, whatever it is. 

So she runs.

Kelly jumps around the country, staying in motels without bibles tucked into the bedside tables and hiding in dark places that angels can’t see. She never stays long, she doesn’t look at anyone even though she can feel them looking at her, eyeing her swelling stomach and wondering why the room has suddenly gotten 10 degrees colder. And she is cold  _all_  the time. She hunches into herself to keep her heart warm, to keep her child safe from prying eyes. No one offers her comfort or solace. Their eyes glance over her, unsettled.

Then one night, she steps into a diner and huddles into a corner booth. She shivers and her teeth chatter. The very bones of her ache. 

A man approaches her table. He’s young, but strong and healthy looking, and he’s gotten closer to her than anyone else has in weeks. She’s immediately suspicious.

“Yes?”

The man smiles with dark eyes. There is not one thing malicious about him. He has the face of a boy.

“Hi,” he says. “My name is Jesse Turner. I think I can help you.”


	13. 12.08 coda

They would usually be laughing together right now. Dean would have put his hand on his shoulder and said,  _Nice mind trick back there, Obi Wan_ , and they’d go home, onwards and forwards. 

But nobody’s laughing, because the bunker is dark. Dean isn’t picking up his phone and neither is Sam. The Impala is nowhere in sight. Castiel is alone.

Well, not completely alone.

He does have his thoughts, and the voices of the others.

_This nephilim must be annihilated It cannot come to be born Brother are you close to her This never would have happened if Castiel had not let the devil escape Curse his name He is no brother of mine Cas please man can you hear me We shall place Castiel’s name among the Disgraced and paint the Gates with his ashes Don’t worry Bevell this actually works to our advantage now we won’t have to get our hands dirty of course I’m not going to rescue them -_

Castiel sighs and puts his head into his hands. One line, one voice among these angry fearful thousands is Dean’s. He calls to him from somewhere that Castiel cannot see.  _Help me help us Cas please we’ve been in here for so damn long Castiel please._ Laced with guilt and reverence. 

Sometimes Castiel wonders if this is some kind of cruel joke. If he has been doomed since the first moment he met him to bear witness to his closest friend’s fall into doom and ruin. He has come too close too many times to count in the last 10 years. 

They’ve been short with each other lately. They haven’t been making enough time to talk to each other as they should. They each were worrying about different things but there has always been an assumption of return for them; Dean always calls and Castiel always goes, so it has always been and so he has hoped it would always be. But now he’s afraid he’s missed some sort of chance.

He’s afraid no one is going to help him. He’s afraid that he won’t ever find Dean and that so many things will go left unsaid because he was too foolish to say them when he had the opportunity.

“Hello?”

Castiel lifts his head. The warding in the bunker is still down. It could be anyone on their doorstep, but it isn’t just anyone.

Mary smiles when she crosses the threshold into the library. She smiles at him. “Hi. I was in the neighborhood, thought I’d drop by. Kind of dark in here, isn’t it?” Then she takes in Castiel’s face, the tear tracks drying on his cheeks and the rigid curl of his fingers, and her smile slowly falls. “Castiel, what’s wrong?”

“They’re gone,” he croaks. “Sam and Dean. Something is keeping me from reaching them.”

She puts down her duffle bag and crouches beside him, laying a hand on his forearm. “When did you last speak to them? Tell me everything.”

* * *

He counts the days. Hours. Minutes. Seconds. Milliseconds. Thousands upon thousands of them. If this goes on much longer he can easily see himself descending into madness. The same kind that has Dean pacing holes in the floor and thinking like a skipping record g _otta get out gotta get out ow fucking - gotta get out how long has it been god I’m freaking losing it in here_

“Castiel.” 

He shakes his head. “Sorry,” he says. “Were you saying something?”

Mary smiles patiently at him. Right, they’re in her car. They’ve stopped at a restaurant. “I asked what kind of toppings you wanted on your burger,” she reminds him. “You looked a little far away just now.”

He adds his own voice to the cacophony in his head:  _I wish I_ were _far away. I wish I were where you are._

“I’m right here,” is what he says, and it comes out dejected and disappointed.

Mary puts a hand on his shoulder. She’s been doing that a lot, harmlessly touching him. Grounding him. He appreciates it. “They’re going to be ok. You said your friend Crowley is looking into it. We’ll find them soon.”

“He is not my friend,” Castiel mutters darkly. “But I’m willing to overlook that for now.”

Mary nods. “Good. Now. Toppings?”

Castiel slumps. “As many as are available, please,” he tells her.

With a nod, Mary leans out of the driver’s side window to place their order. She also pays at the next window. Castiel thinks it might be a little backwards for her to be comforting  _him_  right now, when it is her children locked away somewhere. He can see the lines of tension in her brow when she thinks he isn’t looking, so he knows she cares. But she’s stronger than he is. She isn’t falling apart at the seams with worry like he is.

“Thank you,” he blurts, because it suddenly seems like the right thing to do. “I don’t know how you knew to come to the bunker when you did, but it was good of you to do so.”

Mary’s eyes are hard and her mouth is grim as she says, “A mother knows. I hadn’t gotten a text from Dean in days.”

Castiel’s lip quivers. “I can hear him,” he confesses.

Mary puts down her food. “What, right now?”

Castiel nods, morosely.

“What’s he thinking about?”

 _gotta get out gotta get out._ _they wouldn’t actually let me die in here would they? I know we’re technically dead men but they can’t do this to us. ow, god dammit._

Castiel winces. “A few of his ribs are cracked. It’s really starting to bother him.” He hesitates. “He’s trying not to think about it, but he’s afraid.”

Mary shakes her head. “That sounds like Dean. He always did his best to be brave, even when he was small.”

The way that his love courses through the core of him reminds Castiel of the way that lava flows down the side of a mountain, deadly and molten. “He  _is_  brave. He has faced many foes in his lifetime and the American government will certainly not be the one that breaks him.”

Mary smiles. “That’s the spirit.”

Castiel smiles a little bit. “I can be brave, too,” he teases.

Mary takes a long sip of her iced tea and gently rests her hand on top of Castiel’s. “I know you can. It’s one of the many things I like about you.”

 

They eat the rest of their meal in silence. Castiel counts the seconds.

* * *

Angels are hunting the nephilim while he and Mary are hunting the Winchesters. In moments when he tries to distract himself from listening to Dean’s increasingly frantic prayers, he tries to call Kelly even though he knows she'll never pick up. 

“What would you do?” he asks. “If you knew the child inside you was an abomination?”

Mary looks thrown. Her knuckles go white against the steering wheel. “No one believes that about their own child,” she says. “I would do exactly what she’s doing.”

Castiel sighs. He should have expected such an answer.

 _I wonder if he really thinks that,_ Mary thinks.  _These last few days he’s been so compassionate. I can’t really imagine him -_

Only she can. She can imagine his righteous fury and it makes him ashamed.

Castiel turns his head away from her and looks out the window instead at the rolling scenery. “I’m torn about it, actually,” he answers aloud. “I understand where she’s coming from, and I certainly know something about defending my family from the politics of Heaven.”

Mary hums. “It’s rude to read people’s thoughts when you’re sitting right next to them.”

Castiel laughs bitterly and knocks his head against the glass of the window with the movement. “I wish I had a choice.”

_it’s so dark down here._

Castiel squeezes his eyes shut. Dean’s voice is thin and weak today. The angels get more vitriolic with each day that passes and it’s getting harder to hear him over their raucous din.

The radio fizzles and fades out, and Mary clicks a few buttons. “Damn,” she grumbles. This is the third time this has happened in the last twelve hours.

“I’m sorry,” Castiel says. “It’s the stress.”

Mary shakes her head. “It’s ok, Castiel. It’s not your fault. How are they today?”

Castiel shakes his head. “Dean is not doing well at all. Sam is only marginally better.”

“Hang in there, boys,” Mary mumbles to herself.

“You love them,” Castiel marvels. It has sort of just hit home for him.

Mary’s mouth ticks up. “You’re one to talk,” she replies.

Castiel concedes the point.

“How are  _you_ today?” she asks next.

Castiel shrugs. “The same as ever, I suppose.”

Mary is quiet for a minute. “What was the last thing you said to him?” Mary asks, quietly this time. “I know you’re thinking about it. Probably wishing it was something different, aren’t you?”

Castiel’s breath hitches. “Sometimes there just isn’t enough time to say the things we want to.”

“You’ll get your chance,” Mary states. He is amazed by how steady her voice is as she says that, like she truly believes it. 

 _waitin’ for you,_ Dean thinks, soft.  _hope you can hear me._

If only prayer could work in reverse. But no one hears Castiel’s thoughts but himself.

_I can._

_I’m coming._

_Hold on, Dean._

_I love you._

Castiel fixes the car radio for the third time and [a slow song](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DLd6fAO4idaI&t=ZmQzNWNiOTQwNzc5YzFlZGE2OTdmN2Q2YzRkYmZlOWRmYTJiZTM2NSxCbEQ0QjNzQQ%3D%3D&b=t%3ACrFuYjT2BKdYepXqH48PTQ&p=http%3A%2F%2Fozonecologne.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F154235338118%2F1208-coda&m=1) starts to fill up the cabin. It gets fainter and fainter as they roll down the highway, until he can’t hear any of the words at all.


	14. 12.09 additional scene

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> per @deanismypatronass‘s request - Dean and Castiel making eye contact over Sam’s shoulder in the 12.09 hug.

He knows, logically, that nothing’s coming after them after the showdown at the cabin. He doesn’t hear footsteps echoing off the trees, he doesn’t see any scope lights flickering beyond the hills. Still, the fear stays with him. Any number of things could go wrong. Running through the woods at night never leads to good things.

Only this time, it does. One minute he’s tearing through the branches towards what he really fucking hopes is route 34 and the next? He’s looking at a familiar face.

Time slows down and the world narrows down to blue eyes, a plush and shocked slack mouth. Fear has left him; safety takes its place. As long as Castiel is here, he doesn’t have to run through the dark on his own.

Sam lurches forward and snags Castiel in a hug, squeezing so tightly that Dean can see his muscles strain with the effort from here. His feet, oddly enough, are rooted to the ground. Castiel stares at him over Sam’s shoulder.

He looks… tired. Rumpled, more so than usual. There are bags under his eyes, cushioning what look suspiciously like tears gathering along the edges of his lashes. He squeezes Sam back, but he doesn’t look away from Dean’s face while he does it. Dean stares back.

God, he almost hadn’t even picked up the phone. He’d been this close to never seeing that face again. Castiel must be thinking the same thing, because his shoulders shake and heave as he lets Sam go. He reaches for Dean.

No need to panic, now. No need for dying declarations or frantic, cracking voices (could you imagine if that was to be the last time he’d heard his voice in his ear?). He’s always safe when the view in front of him is blue. He takes a deep breath and throws his arm around Castiel’s shoulder in a fist like he usually would, relief and fatigue settling in his blood.

He hasn’t had a fond or a gentle look thrown in his direction in weeks. He almost died in a hole that shouldn’t even exist far away from his best friend and he hasn’t even gotten to say some things he’d dreamed about confessing one day. So when Castiel fits himself into the jagged grooves of him, gladly and effortlessly, Dean can’t help folding back over him in return. He can’t help thawing out in a moment like this. He’s got to savor this while he can - he knows what’s coming and Cas is not going to like it.

But he can’t meet his eyes. That’s too much. And he can’t risk Castiel guessing what he’s done and trying to save him, yet again.

Mom’s here. She came for them. Despite the bad guys’ best efforts, he really isn’t alone. He can focus on that. He looks at her instead and tries to ignore the lump in his throat.

It’s worse when they scramble into the car. Dean can see the confusion in Sam’s face when Dean rounds the trunk and opens the side door, but he doesn’t acknowledge it. He slides in on his side and waits.

Castiel is close behind him, settling on the other side of the back seat. Mary and Sam take their places too, and Dean keeps staring straight ahead. Mom’s hair and Sam’s hair is the same length now. Sam is laughing at her, even now. There is still joy to be had in these last moments he knows that he’s living, comfort and security in family.

He can’t bear to look. But he moves his hand across the leather seats and touches the back of Castiel’s hand.

Castiel, with a start, glances over. He doesn’t speak, but Dean can feel his eyes on him asking a thousand questions. He simply turns his hand over, offering his palm, and Dean grips tight.

_Savor it,_ he reminds himself.  _Hold on to this while you can. But don’t look. Don’t look at him, or you won’t be able to let go._

At the stroke of midnight, the car stops. He glances down, nods to himself. And turns at last.

He looks Castiel right in the eyes. One last time.


	15. 12.09 coda

It’s complicated.

He hasn’t spoken to or seen another friendly face - any face - in over six weeks, by his own calculations. That’s a lot of time to pass with only your thoughts for company, even if he spent it humming Stairway to Heaven over and over to count the minutes. 

(He’s never listening to that song again, swear on his life.)

He should be bursting at the seams to talk to somebody. To interact. And he is - his fingers itch the the whole way back to Kansas, now that Castiel’s in the backseat.

But. It’s complicated. 

He  _made it_ complicated.

Dean did say earlier that prison was worse than Hell, but coming back to the bunker feels exactly the same as digging himself out of the grave. He doesn’t… fit right. He doesn’t know where to go, what to do first. Sam begs off for a shower, but still he lingers before he goes, unwilling to leave Dean alone. Unwilling to BE alone, even for a few minutes.

Castiel is much the same. He hovers.

Dean can’t remember him doing that before. Hovering scared in his shadow. Has he just not been paying attention? Castiel has never been shy, broken every rule in the book, shouldn’t be surprised, but during the Apocalypse Dean had thought the guy had just finally grown a conscience. Come around to the good guys’ side, that’s all it was. Sticking close because he's weird and waiting for orders. He justified whatever he had to do to save this world, save as many innocent people as he could. 

This, tonight, this wasn’t about following a conscience. This wasn’t about saving the greater good. Castiel broke a blood pact with heaven because he was being  _selfish_. He did it without even hesitating. There was something fierce and destructive in his eyes, desperate and bloodthirsty, and all for his sake.

It's a terrifying thought that he could bring someone to the edge of a cliff like that. Even more so than staring Billie down and knowing what was waiting for him on the other side.

Because Dean truly thought he was going to die tonight. He made his peace with it. Saving his baby brother is written deep in his bones, and Sam and Mary actually understood each other. Maybe Castiel could still read minds, maybe he couldn’t, but the way that his eyes flicked over to Dean’s and the way that his lip quivered…

 _I did it, all of it, for you,_ he’d said once.  _YOU._

“Dean?”

Dean blinks back to the waking world and shuffles his feet. Castiel is still hovering over his shoulder looking worried. Looking like he wants to reach out and touch.

“What?” he asks. His voice is still rough, thick with something he can’t name.

Castiel’s frown deepens. “You’ve been standing here for five minutes. Without… without doing anything.”

“I have?”

“Yes,” Castiel says, and then he lifts a hand. It lands softly on Dean’s shoulder, not rough and desperate like in the underbrush, but his fingers clench. With relief, maybe, or something else.

It’s complicated.

“Just gotta reboot, I guess,” Dean answers, throwing a little laugh in. It sounds just as forced as it feels. He can’t bring himself to take another step. His knees suddenly feel really shaky. “Whoa,” he whispers.

Castiel catches him around the waist, slumping against the wall along his back. “Ok,” he grunts. “Dean.”

“I’m good. Geez. Ok, I’m good,” he hears himself say. “ _Cas_.”

“I know.”

How can he say that? Suddenly, nothing about Castiel makes sense to him anymore. Everything feels much heavier; he’s going over every moment in the past with new eyes.  _You just gave up an entire army for one guy._ Maybe he should have seen this coming. Maybe he's always known Castiel was a little unhinged.

“You - you fucked up. Just now.”  _And it's my fault,_ he doesn't say. What a feeling.

Castiel sighs. “What is it you always say? ‘We’ll deal with it?’”

“Major fuck up,” Dean mumbles. “You said… you never wanted to kill another angel ever again.”

“That’s true,” Castiel replied. His breath tickles the back of Dean’s ear. He can feel the melody of his voice between his shoulders, rumbling right through to his heart. “But I wanted something else more.”

Dean sucks in a breath, and sags.

Castiel arms come up around him, gently squeezing him around the sides and reaching up to palm over his sternum. 

“Right,” Dean says. “Right.”

He doesn’t know how long they sit there; he doesn’t sing Stairway to Heaven to himself. Castiel might press a kiss into his hair between one breath and the next, but he can’t be sure. He reaches out his hand and puts it on Castiel’s knee, steadying both of them.

Somewhere in the bunker, the water shuts off.

“It’s your turn,” Castiel murmurs.

Dean lolls his head. Castiel is rubbing small circles into his chest. “What?”

“The shower. You’ve got to get up.”

The sound that Dean makes in the back of his throat is weak and pitiful.

“You have to get up, Dean. Get up.”

Dean braces himself against Castiel and he stands. As Castiel goes with him, he turns to meet his eyes. They’re blue and determined and fiery bright, and something in him settles. A little piece of him fits back where it should.

Maybe it isn’t so complicated after all.

He nods. “Thank you,” he says at last, like he probably should have hours ago. 

Castiel lifts his head, proudly. “You’re fucking welcome.”

On shaky legs, Dean heads towards the showers one step at a time.

Castiel, of course, follows.


	16. 12.10 coda

Sam twitches all the way through the nature documentary that Dean chooses for Castiel’s sake. It gets so bad that he knocks his beer right off the table, splashing Dean’s shoes.

“Aw, come on, man,” Dean grumps, standing. “Now I gotta get the mop.”

He stands and heads for the door, but he hesitates as he moves around the table. He pats Castiel on the shoulder, much more gently than usual. The touch doesn’t escape Sam’s attention.

He licks his lips and dutifully keeps his eyes down so they can have their moment. Castiel sighs under the contact like it really does relieve some of his burden.

Sam waits a full minute and a half so he’s  _sure_  that Dean is out of earshot. And then he clears his throat.

“Not to keep harping on it or anything -”

“You’re wondering if I made the right call,” Castiel sighs. He settles deeper into his seat. “With Lily.”

Sam swallows and nods. “It’s just… I spoke to her, Cas. The spells that she uses take a lot out of her.”

Castiel doesn’t say anything.

“Her soul, specifically,” Sam adds, in case Castiel isn’t getting it.

Castiel shakes his head. “I figured. Humans can’t control that kind of magic without paying a price.”

Sam’s frown only deepens. “Cas… a soulless person,” he begins, nervously flexing his fists against his thighs. “A soulless person doesn’t  _feel_ forgiveness. They need a purpose.”

Castiel shrugs. Like he doesn’t even care that Lily could come storming through the front door tomorrow to take his life from him.

Sam grits his teeth. “I want to look into this stuff. Enochian magic.”

“No.”

Sam straightens in his chair and turns more completely towards Castiel. “Look, with Lily probably coming back for you, you  _need_  a back up plan. Just in case. Besides, don’t you think this would have been good to know, dealing with an archangel?”

Castiel is gearing himself up for another protest, but Sam cuts him off. “If nothing else. Do it for Dean. You have  _got_ to protect yourself, Castiel, or he’ll go down trying to do it for you.”

Castiel freezes at that, and Sam is about to press on, but Castiel sinks lower in his seat instead. So Sam lets up. 

Castiel laughs.

“My human weakness,” Castiel scoffs. “Ishim was right.”

Sam purses his lips and picks at the corner of the table halfheartedly just to have something to do. “I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing.”

Behind them, a crash startles Sam out of his seat.

Dean is standing in the doorway. Water has sloshed over the edge of the bucket that he’d brought in with him, now abandoned on the floor and still trembling from the force of the drop. He indignantly clutches his mop in a tight fist.

“Sam,” he says very calmly. “Could you give us a minute?”

Hesitant, Sam climbs out of his chair. “Yeah, I’m um. I’m pretty tired. I’m think I’m gonna head to bed anyway,” he says. The words are unconvincing even to his own ears.

He has to awkwardly squeeze by Dean to get out of the room; his brother’s face is scarily blank, real pain and guilt swimming behind his eyes. He and Cas had been bickering like an old married couple all week, and Sam is not eager to be caught in the middle of another one of their spats.

He goes into the kitchen and waits. For Dean to emerge, needing comfort - he always comes back here. For Castiel to flee, needing solace - he usually seeks out the places that Dean treasures when he’s moping. For the coffee pot to bring warmth back to Sam’s own belly - he has a feeling he’s going to need it.

He sits there with his laptop open for a whole two hours. Nobody comes in or out of the main hall, and he doesn’t hear a sound from the family room apart from the quiet sounds of bird calls and another British narrator. He’s starting to get a little worried, actually. 

He tiptoes to and from the bathroom three times. Just to check. Still nothing.

On the third pass, he gives up the charade and peers around the corner into the family room.

At first, he doesn’t think that Castiel is even in the room anymore. He just sees his brother’s silhouette against the bright backdrop of the movie screen. Upon closer inspection though, Sam can see a pair of dress shoes sticking out to the side. Dean’s arm is slowly moving back and forth, as if he were carding his hands through someone’s hair.

“You need more ice?” Sam can barely hear the question over the new documentary that’s playing. It looks familiar. Dean’s voice is soft and sweet and earnest and startlingly  _un_ familiar.

Castiel must say something in reply, because Dean nods and leans back in his seat, lolling his head back against his chair.

Sam stands in the doorway watching his brother soothe the hurt angel lying in his lap only for a minute more before he starts to feel like he’s intruding. “Oh, I love this part,” he hears Castiel say.

Dean hums fondly in response, and Sam - absurdly - feels tears spring to his eyes.

For one family today, the love and devotion of an angel brought only heartbreak and devastation. A fractured household, deep and permanent loss, the kind that drives good people to insanity. The same kind that took their dad. Sam can’t help but think that if it had been Castiel on that porch that day, gunned down protecting the person he loved from harm, that Dean could have ended up the same way as Lily. He dreads the day that they might find themselves facing that very scenario.

Well, at least Dean would look good in an eyepatch.

Tomorrow, Sam can do some more digging into Enochian lore. Maybe it will give them a leg up on Lucifer. But for now, everybody’s safe and sound in their hole in the ground, and he doesn’t feel like reading anything other than a bedtime story.

Wonder how Mom’s doing in Atlanta.


	17. 12.11 coda

Wet leaves sop underfoot as the brothers trek through the woods, retracing Dean’s invisible steps. Sam is keeping both eyes out for anything that could give away the story of what happened last night, fully aware that his brother is practically useless right now.

“So, like,” Dean begins. Sam takes an exasperated breath in prep for the question. “Just how  _many_ things do we kill?”

Sam sighs. “A lot.”

“Yeah but, like. More examples,” Dean says, kicking some leaves. The flashlight wiggles in his grip and points too far to left, so Sam gingerly guides his hand back up. Dean smiles at him. “Please tell me I’ve met a mermaid.”

Sam scoffs. “Siren, actually.”

Dean’s eyes go bright and wide. “No way,” he breathes. “I was kidding. Ariel is real?”

Sam laughs at that, shaking his head and peering more closely at a nearby collection of trash on the ground. It doesn’t seem to provide any clues. “Not exactly. Sirens take whatever form is most attractive to their target.”

“So… no fish tail.”

“None,” Sam says. He smirks. “No boobs either.”

Dean trips over a loose root and frowns.

Sam’s smirk only grows. “Your siren was a man, dude,” he clarifies, in case he’s not getting it.

Behind him, Dean goes suspiciously quiet. Sam turns his head around, expecting a joke, expecting a disgusted contortion to his mouth, maybe some comically wide eyes and red-faced stuttering. 

But Dean is not Dean right now. Dean doesn’t know how to put on the act he usually does.

Dean just sort of blinks at the ground, and Sam isn’t at all happy about the self-conscious lip quiver that Dean’s sporting. “Dean?”

“Does that…” Dean licks his lips and shrugs. “Does that bother you?”

The question hurts like a physical blow. “No,” he assures him, stepping way closer. Fun’s over, this isn’t funny anymore. This is his brother, this is the person that he loves most in the world, even if he doesn’t remember that. “Not at all, Dean. It’s just - you joke. About stuff like that. All the time.”

Dean nods, but doesn’t look completely convinced.

“I’m really sorry,” Sam said, meaning every painful word. “It’s fine, honestly.”

Dean blows out a breath. “Cool. I forget, you know.”

Sam smiles, glad that the moment has passed. “Yeah, not ideal. How am I even going to explain this to Cas?”

“Who’s Cas?” Dean asks. He scrunches up his face. “Oh god, that’s not the siren, is it?”

Sam laughs out loud this time, not totally able to smother the sound even though he  _should_ be going for stealth out here. “Nah. Cas is…”

Sam tilts his head. He holds a branch out of the way so that Dean can step through behind him. He only gets this kind of chance like once in a lifetime. “He’s an angel.”

“What’d he do?” Dean asks, falling for the bait.

Sam smiles. “A literal angel, Dean,” he says. “Halo, wings, the works. And he’s your best friend.”

“Shut up,” Dean breathes, and if it were possible he sounds even more excited to hear about this than he did to hear about the sirens. “Seriously?”

Sam nods. He touches the gun in his waistband just to be sure that it’s still there. “Seriously.”

He waits a couple of seconds, playing it up. He wants to savor this. “Well, I mean. There is the…”

He waves a hand over his shoulder, perfectly casual. “Nah.”

“What?” Dean pushes. “Come on, what?” he tugs on Sam’s sleeve. “So help me, I will turn off this flashlight and leave you here.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “I’d know where to find you,” he tells him, eyeing the still-visible Waldo’s sign over the tops of the trees. He sighs. “It’s just that you guys are close.  _Really_ close,” he says, drawing it out. God, he should be recording this. Is it twisted that he’s really enjoying this? “I thought I saw something between the two of you in the kitchen the other day, but I was probably imagining things.”

(What Sam saw, in reality, was Castiel getting coffee. The two of them were still fighting, and even though there was only enough in the pot left for one cup - which Castiel absolutely had a right to - he slid the full mug over to Dean without so much as a sour look. The two of them didn’t say anything, but the grunt that Dean offered in response was grateful, somehow.)

Dean blinks, mouth slack. “Oh. But it was nothing, right?”

Sam purses his lips to hold a laugh in. “Maybe you should ask him later. You can borrow my phone. Or, you know, you could always wait until you get your memory back to find out.”

Dean nods like he’s looking forward to it. “Cas is my best friend. Ok. I’ll remember that one.”

* * *

When everything is said and done and they’re back on the road again, Dean knocks Sam’s shoulder with a loose fist. 

“Hey, can I borrow your phone? Mine’s still busted,” he recalls.

Sam nods and starts fishing it out of his pocket. “What, you remember how to talk again?”

“Shut up, asshole, it was like 10 minutes,” Dean grumbles, holding his hand out. He wiggles his fingers impatiently. “Come on, I’m getting old over here. Might actually develop Alzheimer’s waiting on your ass.”

“Not funny,” Sam sighs. He’s about to hand over the phone when he jerks it back, eyes narrowed. “Wait. Why do you need it? I already sent Mom a head’s up text.”

Dean’s eyes go shifty and he fidgets in his seat. “‘m gonna call Cas,” he mumbles.

“What was that?” Sam asks, just to be an asshole. 

“I’m gonna call Cas,” Dean repeats, louder and more irritated. “Just! Gimme the damn phone,” he mutters, snatching it out of Sam’s hands. Sam throws angry looks at Dean from the passenger seat for like two miles. No need to get grabby, geez.

“Sam?” he hears through the tinny speaker. “Is everything alright? How’s Dean?”

Dean clears his throat. “I’m ok, buddy. Figured you’d want to hear it from me first.”

He can’t tune them out like he wants to. He’s surprised that Dean’s taking this call with him right next to him. “Dean,” he hears Cas say, familiar as always. “Thank you for calling. It’s good to hear your voice.”

Dean smiles, a quirk of the lips that only those close to him would recognize. “Ditto. How’s things on the road?”

They talk for a while like that, banal things that sound suspiciously like  _how was your day _honey,_ oh mine was fine, _and that Sam wouldn’t dare comment on. Not now that Dean remembers everything.

His baggage is back; every last piece of luggage in the memory bank. Sam wouldn’t touch this particular suitcase with a ten foot pole, not if you paid him.

When Dean hangs up, after a quiet, “Well, stay safe, I’ll talk to you soon,” he wordlessly hands Sam’s phone back. “Thanks,” he tells him.

Sam shrugs. “Yeah, no problem.”

The ride is mostly silent after that. Dean doesn’t bother turning on the music and Sam doesn’t bother asking him to.

“Hey,” Sam says. “Do you remember anything from when you were hexed? Conversations, things like that?”

Dean had lied for Rowena’s sake, but he doesn’t need to lie here. He knows what Sam’s referring to, their moment back in the forest. “Yeah, Sammy. I remember.”

Satisfied, Sam leans back against his seat. He starts to giggle.

“You forgot the word ‘lamp.’”

“I swear to God, Sam.”


	18. 12.12 coda

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please check out [the comic](http://ozonecologne.tumblr.com/post/157583487803/purgatoryjar-i-know-i-know-cliffhanger-right) made by purgatory-jar!

“Are you fucking kidding me,” Dean gasps. He pulls Castiel’s jacket off with both hands and doesn’t even bother shutting the door behind him. No point anyway. He bites down on Castiel’s lip without being cute about it.

“Dean,” Castiel hisses, helpless. His hands hover uselessly out to the sides as Dean pushes him deeper into his bedroom.

“‘I love you?’” Dean accuses, squeezing Castiel’s hips with those rough beautiful hands so hard that it would probably bruise anyone else. “Just like that, in front of everyone,” he says. He shoves Castiel down, hard.

Castiel bounces a little on the bed, right against Dean’s chest, quickly descending down on his. He looks like  _he_ was the one that got hit by a truck, eyes wide open in the oncoming headlights. “ _Dean._ ”

“Don’t,” Dean growls, ripping Castiel’s shirt open. Buttons scatter to the floor. His skin is pale, smooth, unblemished beneath the cotton. Soft and pliant where his nails dig into it. “You couldn’t even look me in the eye, you coward.”

Castiel can’t deny it or defend himself.

“Your last words,” Dean adds, dangerously close to a sob. “Were going to be…”

He pulls back from Castiel’s face and pants into his mouth. His nose brushes against Castiel’s in a kiss of its own. His lashes are wet.

“I love you,” he whispers.

Castiel reaches up and wraps his arms around Dean’s neck, drawing him into a hug. He knows, intuitively, that Dean isn’t repeating his own words from before. He’s just stating a fact.

And quite a personal one, from the way his lip quivers. The kind of fact that’s unwavering, heartfelt and secret but truer all the same as the seconds tick by, which makes it that much harder to confess to somebody else.

All the breath in Castiel’s body leaves him at once, painfully. Dean doesn’t give him the chance to say anything else before he surges forward again and kisses him, wet lashes cool against his skin. He’s gentler with it than before. His hands, still tacky with dried blood, come up to loosen Castiel’s tie. It slithers limply in his grip, cool and silky, and Castiel gasps when the fabric slides across his nipple. Dean bunches it in his grip against his knitted-back-together side.

“The… door,” Castiel sighs.

Dean turns his head and kisses his cheek. His ear. The bolt of his jaw. Dragging his warm, slack mouth along the rough skin of his neck. “Doesn’t matter,” he tells him.

That’s his serious voice.

Castiel swallows hard. Dean licks a long line up the column of his throat.

“Just be with me,” Dean pleads. His hands go to Castiel’s belt. “God, I really thought I was going to lose you,” he laughs, a little hoarse.

“I really thought I was going to die,” Castiel confesses, just on the right side of hysterical. He lifts his hips up just enough that Dean can pull his pants down over the swell of his ass. Castiel hesitantly reaches up and runs one hand through Dean’s hair.

He walks his fingers down until he’s cradling Dean’s face. Their eyes catch, and hold.

Without another word, Castiel starts divesting Dean of his clothing. They kiss and they kiss and they kiss until their faces rub raw with stubble burn and their lips are red and wet. 

The door stays ajar, and the sounds of their hushed and anguished moans echo like old ghosts through the halls.


	19. 12.13 coda

Long-lost lovers, reunited in blinding light. Turning towards one another with bowed heads, disappearing into eternity together. Bonded with no regrets and without looking back.

It’s bittersweet to witness. It’s both difficult and a blessing to watch what happens when someone that would go to ends of the earth for you ends up regretting it.

When Fiona and Gavin disappear from their threshold of cursed stone, Dean turns from the doorway and rubs his eyes. He tells himself it’s to dispel the spots still dotting along his vision from staring too hard, but it’s really because he’s starting to get a headache.

“Look at this mess,” he mutters, knocking the edge of the bowl that Sam had mixed together with his knuckles. A few drops of blood have been scattered along the table, one thin strand from where Gavin had been standing.

Sam sighs. “I’ll clean it up. Don’t worry about it.”

Dean stares at the blood on the table. His eyes snag on the clear edge of one jar that sits across from him.

“Nah,” he finds himself saying. “I’ll help.”

If Sam is surprised by the offer, he doesn’t say so. He picks up the sullied bowl and carries it into the kitchen, ready to dispose of and clean when it’s convenient.

“Don’t get any of that crap on the dishes!” Dean calls after him. Sam answers with a scoff and shuffles gingerly out of the room.

With a sigh, Dean starts collecting everything together. Gently closing the spell book. Sweeping sand off the table and back into its vial. They’d been careful with the bottle of dragon tears, not spilling a drop. Dean’s hesitant to pick it up, as precious as the contents are.

And then, of course, there’s the other thing.

Hesitantly, he twists the last jar around so that the label faces him.

_Angel feathers,_ the careful scrawl reads. He knows the script well, and the hand that wrote it.

Dean almost smiles and picks it up. Weighs it close to his heart.

It’s light as air. The feathers don’t even rustle in the jar, perfectly preserved and all bunched together. White and clean and perfect.

Well, not perfect. A drop of blood sits in the bottom of each quill - dots of ink that write a never-ending story.

Dean turns the jar around in his hands, slowly and carefully. Every feather is marked the same way.

_It doesn’t hurt,_ Castiel had assured him.  _They would have fallen out anyway._

Dean had believed him then, took the feathers without a thought and filed them away for safekeeping. Some he keeps in the back of the Impala still: talismans, good luck charms. Small comforts.

They don’t feel like good luck today. Last week he had to hold Castiel’s bloody body in his hands as he made his dying declaration. An angel was dying and his last act was to save them all, out of love alone. Dean’s been spared this time from having to watch, and yet here he finds himself again, holding Castiel’s bloody body in his hands and saying another goodbye, day after day.

Why can’t they seem to break that cycle? Why do they always end up only with pieces of each other under lock and key?

He hangs his head and clenches the jar of feathers tighter in his hands. A great surge of longing overtakes him, like nausea only worse. He misses Castiel with a fierceness that is all too familiar to him these days. Sam, of course, chooses this moment to reappear.

“Hey,” he says uselessly. Dean puts the jar down and clears his throat.

“Hey,” he replies, voice a little thick. “Let’s get going.”

They load the rare ingredients of their grandfather’s spell work into their arms, making light conversation on their way back down to the archives. Sam commends him for remembering the ship’s name and for making the connection to Gavin. Dean begrudgingly thanks him for persuading Rowena to help them yet again.

“You ok?” Sam asks finally, sliding the bottle of dragon tears back into its place on a low shelf. “You look like you’re thinking hard about something.”

Dean sighs, but nods. “It’s never easy watching somebody go like that.”

Sam nods and hums like he understands. “You should call Cas,” he says.

Dean reels. “Dude. I talked to him like, yesterday.”

“And you should talk to him today too,” he says, in that annoyingly patient tone of his. “He’s probably, you know. Lonely.”

Dean frowns. ‘Lonely’ is just another way of saying that you miss somebody.

“Fine. I’ll call him. But I’m probably just going to get his voicemail,” he grumbles.

Sam shrugs. “So leave a message. I think he’ll appreciate it.” 

He has the gall to wink as he slaps Dean on the back and leaves the room. He should be thankful that  _this_  is the extent of Sam’s teasing, after that passionate moment in Ramiel’s barn, but he can’t find it in himself to be anything but annoyed. Dean grits his teeth and would definitely lurch forward to return the slap if he wasn’t so afraid of breaking everything in here.

Instead he turns back to his shelf, where he places the glass jar around chest height. He traces one finger down the glass, leaving a fading streak of warmth beside one blood-tinged feather.

“You hear that, Cas?” he asks the air. His cheeks burn and his throat still feels thick, but he doesn’t let it stop him this time. “You hear me missin’ you?”

He, of course, gets no response. But he’s got hope that maybe the next time that he holds the pieces of Castiel in his hands, the room will be full of light.

At the very least, he has his own reunion to look forward to.


	20. 12.14 coda

Dean may have missed out on the fight, but he still feels like drinking when he finally gets back home. Ketch’s expensive bottle of bribery is still sitting on the war room table and his glass is still in his favorite spot, right where he left it.

“Oh, hello, sweetness. Daddy’s here,” Dean coos at it. He hums as he picks up the bottle - still heavy even after a couple of drinks. “Shhh. It’s just you and me now.”

Sam scoffs. “Really, Dean? You’re that easy?”

Dean rolls his eyes over his shoulder. “So?”

Sam doesn’t really want to start anything, he’s feeling too good. He lets Dean smuggle his booze away to his room like always and revels in the still-fresh feeling of adrenaline-fueled ass-kicking. Changing the world. Power in the palms of his hands. He’ll try not to let it go to his head, but he deserves to celebrate the win at least.

Dean, meanwhile, falls like a heavy weight against the back of his bedroom door. 

He tosses the empty glass in his hand onto the bed and guzzles straight from the bottle instead, sighing as heat spreads down his chest. The feeling radiates out into his fingertips and he blinks, long and slow. He purses his lips and thunks his head against the door.

First Mom. Now Sam.

Adults. They can make their own decisions.

Dean can make his own decision. They tortured his brother. They banged up his car. They almost got Cas  _killed._ No way is he going to start working with the Brits, no matter how many monsters they promise to throw at him.

Peer pressure’s a bitch, though.

He wanders over to his desk and shakes his head a little clearer. His eyes catch on the cell phone sitting beneath his desk light - the screen blinks with a missed call notification. He sets the bottle in its place, and the phone’s up to his ear before the taste of spice and alcohol ever leaves his mouth.

“Dean,” Castiel greets. His voice tilts up, pleased, but it’s rough with fatigue. He’s been on the road all day and he’s frustrated and hurt by his own guilt, and it’s a small blessing that Dean can provide him with even a little bit of relief. He’s not even surprised anymore that he can feel himself smiling too, like one of Pavlov’s dogs or something.

“Hey, Cas,” he sighs. He picks at some chipping wood on the corner of the desk. “How you doing?”

Castiel hums. Dean can hear water running in the background - too heavy to be the shower, must be the sink. The sound goes muffled when Castiel must stick the phone between his ear and his shoulder. “Oh, I’ve been better.”

Dean can see him like he’s standing right here, shuffling around with hunched shoulders, undoing his tie one-handed and smiling to himself as he goes on to loosen his cuffs. His razor’s sitting on the edge of the sink, and the water’s running. He’ll probably flick on the TV soon, to some cop show that Dean can’t stand, then toe his shoes off and shut down for a little while up against the headboard. 

It’s a simple, straightforward dream, and it’s comforting. Dean misses him so much he could puke.

“And how are you doing, Dean?”

Dean doesn’t answer right away, still picking at the desk.

“Anything exciting happen?” Castiel prompts, concern edging in on his tone.

Dean takes a breath. “Yeah, actually. I told you about Mom working with the Brits, right?”

Castiel hums contemplatively. “A few days ago, yes. Have you, um… changed your mind? About forgiving her?”

A splinter breaks off into his index finger. Dean sneers at it and steps away from the desk. “Well, sort of. I’m still not happy about it, I don’t think I’m going to BE happy about it, but I’m not going to fight her on it either.”

“I think that’s very… safe of you.”

Dean scoffs. His finger throbs. “Then why do I feel like such crap about it,” he mutters.

“You don’t like conflict,” Castiel helpfully supplies. 

Dean sits down on the edge of his bed, careful to avoid the glass he tossed there. He sidesteps Castiel’s comment by chasing his own thoughts around in a circle. “I saw it in Sam’s eyes, dude. He and Mom have some sort of  _understanding_ , and Mick was looking pretty friendly at their stupid compound. I’m -” 

He reaches up and pinches the bridge of his nose. Closes his eyes and tries to fight off a headache. Too much too fast. 

“I’m starting to feel a little boxed in, here, man,” he laughs, and the sound of it is wet and frail. “You’re right. I don’t like it.”

“Oh,” Castiel murmurs, deep with sympathy. “Dean.”

“It’s just,” Dean starts again, kicking back against the headboard. “I keep telling people to pick a side. How come nobody picks mine?”

“Perhaps it’s redundant of me to say so, but I do,” Castiel says. He clears his throat. “I mean, I will, if it comes to that.”

Dean hesitates. “I know.”

Castiel swallows. “I know I haven’t been… totally reliable in the past -”

“Gonna stop you right there,” Dean interrupts. “I get it now, ok. I get that you’re with me no matter what. I’d have to be dumb and blind not to, at this point.”

Castiel laughs quietly, with relief. “My point is that you don’t have to feel so alone. I’ll back you up with Mary and your brother. I’m not interested in politics, only your safety and happiness.”

“You promise?” Dean jokes.

“I promise,” Castiel swears. “They’re my family too, and I love them, but…”

He clears his throat.

“But I do have my priorities. And I know where my loyalties lie.”

Dean believes him. 

He sighs and kicks off his shoes. “I really hope this doesn’t come to a fight,” he grumbles. “You and me versus Mom and Sam. That would suck.”

Castiel hums. “And we all know I’m not exactly the best at mediating family conflicts.”

Dean laughs, for real this time. “Yeah. Got a whole angelic civil war to prove that point.”

“Let’s talk about something else.”

Dean shuts his eyes. “One of the Brits dropped off this real fancy booze at the bunker,” he says.

“Hm.”

Dean undoes his belt with one hand. “Sure is a shame I got no one to share it with.”

“Are you drunk?” Castiel asks. Dean pictures him fiddling with the top button of his collar.

“Not yet,” Dean says, a little bit of mirth to it. He pops the button on his pants and massages a slow circle with the heel of his hand, just enough to coax some life back into him. He’s tired, but not too tired for this. “Could be, though. Soon. Who knows.”

“Hm,” Castiel repeats. Dean hears new sounds in the background now - tinny voices and a hint of static. It sounds like Law & Order.

He grins. “Knew it.”  _You’re so predictable,_ he means.  _I know you so well. I’m glad that it’s you in my corner._

“Knew what?” Castiel asks, just a little breathlessly.

Dean lets a tiny moan escape from between his lips. “Forget it,” he says.

Castiel is more than happy to indulge him. He answers with a tiny groan of his own.

“Hey,” Dean blurts, stalling his hand. The splinter in his finger throbs in time with his half-hard cock. “Before we go too far, thanks.”

Castiel exhales, soft and fond. “Of course, Dean.”

He hears the unspoken  _I love you,_ but he does still wish he could get that kiss goodnight.

(Is that really too much to ask?)


	21. 12.15 coda

Dean leaves him to his little phone call. He hears Sam’s pleasant, “Yeah, it went fine,” and he gets the hell out of dodge.

He refuses to lie; he’ll go where Sam leads like he always does even if he’s not happy about the direction they’re going in. When have Dean’s feelings ever made a difference to anyone anyway? Not that he’s holding a grudge. Nah.

He is just so fucking  _sick_ of the lies.

So he picks up his own cell phone and he calls Castiel right the fuck back.

“Dean -”

“No, you know what? I’m gonna ask. What’s wrong with you,” Dean snaps. His feet glide noiselessly through the long bunker halls.

Castiel hesitates. Dean can hear gravel crunching underfoot as he shifts his weight. “Nothing. Can I call you back?” His voice lowers. “This isn’t a good time.”

Dean sneers. “Oh, really. It’s not. Because a minute ago  _you_ said you had no leads on Kelly. Nowhere to go and nothing to do. Right?”

Castiel’s silence is far too telling. The phone audio is muffled for a minute and Dean panics that Castiel is going to hang up the phone. But he can’t, because Dean’s got too much to say and he can’t keep it in forever, you know.

“Cas,” he blurts.

Castiel puts the phone back up to his ear. “What,” he snaps back.

“Hey, watch your tone,” Dean scolds. “C’mon, I thought you loved me or something.”

Castiel doesn’t say anything; Dean swallows and it sticks in his throat. He should know better by now than to use love as ammunition, but some habits die hard.

“I want you to know something, ok? I will never, ever lie to you.”

Castiel takes a breath.

“About anything, anymore. Got it? I want to be done with that. You ask me a question, you get a straight answer.”

Castiel asks, “Promise?”

Dean blinks. “What?”

“Do you promise?” Castiel asks slower. 

The bunkers walls are cool and unyielding where he falls against them. He feels a little braver, pressed to the walls of his home, something to catch him and keep him safe when he feels his most vulnerable. He sighs and lets the tension go out of his shoulders. “Yeah. I promise.”

Castiel makes a noise in the back of his throat. “I know that isn’t easy for you to say,” he says, and the sound is choked and small. “And I’ll…”

He takes a shaky breath.

“I will return the courtesy as best I’m able,” he says.

Dean doesn’t quite like that answer, but he’s pissed off and he’s feeling brave. 

_So ask me a question,_  Castiel had dared him.

Dean chooses, “Are you ok.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Castiel insists. “Dean. Trust me.”

Dean exhales through his nose. He nods.

That isn’t the end of the phone call, though. Castiel starts this sentence three times before he gets it out alright. “I’ll see you at home.”

The conviction with which Castiel says those few words still brings an honest smile to Dean’s face. “Yeah, you will. I’ll even leave the light on for you.”

“Please,” Castiel says. 

Woven in the very fabric of the word is something desperate in his voice that makes Dean’s heart hurt without knowing why. He’s fighting off this strange sense of dread, this damned intuition of his that’s never been wrong, not when it comes to Cas, but he’s smart enough to take what he can get and look forward to whatever good he’s got coming to him. “Well, I am on a roll with the promises today,” he laughs. 

“Alright, I’ll let you go,” he adds. “For real this time.”

Castiel huffs a little laugh, the kind that sets Dean’s heart on a low simmer. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Promise?” Dean jokes.

Castiel hangs up without answering. 

And maybe it’s naive, maybe he’s only setting himself up for more heartbreak, but Dean actually feels a little bit better. 

Lies and guilt will tear people apart - sometimes that comes in the literal form of a giant hound from Hell clawing your chest open. If getting ripped apart is the way that Dean’s destined to go for good, at least he’ll go with the knowledge that he didn’t do it to himself.

He puts his phone back into his pocket.


	22. 12.16 coda

It feels wrong for some reason not telling Castiel that Claire shows up on their case in Wisconsin, but he’s been swallowing that bullshit about “giving people space” for months now and he’s trying to do right by her at least. Let her make her own choices. Besides, it’s kind of nice having her tag along. She’s a pretty cool kid.

He should have called the minute he figured out what Mick was up to. He knows he should have. But it all happens so fast with the bite and the cure and he’s too busy blaming everyone in that room for what’s happening to his - to Claire. His hand, his hand shoved that poisonous needle into Claire’s skin, he as good as killed her himself. “I need some air.” He yanks on the doorknob like he wants to rip Mick’s head off his body and and steps out into the cold night air.

For a minute all he can do is stand on the threshold, chest heaving. He’s frozen to the front step, a terrible ringing in his ears.

And then he hears another high-pitched, agonized scream. It scares him into moving.

He flees on shaky legs off the step and out from under the porch light, like a baby bird shoved too fast out of its nest. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. They come up to flutter around his mouth but never make contact. He settles for locking them together behind his neck, leaning all of his weight down into his shoulders.

He’s been carrying the weight of the world there for years. They’ve gotten good at holding him up in times like this.

Claire screams again, but Dean can hear that it’s quieter than before, wetter, weaker. He squeezes his eyes shut and knocks his forehead against the door, rocking a little.

Whatever righteous reasons he might have had for staying out of Claire’s business crumble when he hears her wet sob on the other side of that door. He winces and he’s extremely self-conscious of the way that his mind is spinning. The way his thoughts are… directing themselves.

_She’s not going to make it, Cas. She’s going to die because of me and you won’t even get to say goodbye and I’m so sorry for taking that from you._

He can feel his phone vibrating in his pocket. Insistently, urgently, over and over. He ignores it.

“Dean,” someone calls through the door.

Dean slowly opens his eyes. It’s quiet.

He takes a deep breath and opens the door, ready to face his mistakes.

The phone stops ringing.

* * *

The walking miracle girl, the once angel vessel that’s tough as nails, lives. He watches Claire drive away in her beat-up little hatchback feeling lucky and grateful and relieved, but his shoulders never quite relax. Yeah, they saved her today. But where she’s driving she might not come back from. They could be right back here again in two months. Sue him if he’s a little tense.

And weirdly? A little emotional.

He’s got no right to her, not really, but he does really love that kid. 

He waves again even though Claire’s car is way too far away and she’s probably not even looking in the rearview anymore anyway. Sam knocks his shoulder with his own and laughs at him.

“Come on, Old Man,” he teases. “We gotta check out by 3.”

Dean throws his head back and makes a show of groaning. “Man, I am going to miss this. Lap of luxury, man.” He follows Sam back to the hotel and points at his back. “You know who would love this place? Cas.”

Sam snorts. “I don’t think Cas cares about these kinds of things.”

Dean makes a noise low in his throat. “Don’t be so sure about that. He does love some good water pressure.”

Just as Sam starts to laugh, Dean’s phone rings again.

He groans. “Hey, I gotta take this, ok? Head on in.”

Sam frowns. “You sure?”

Dean nods and pulls his phone out of his pocket. “Yeah, yeah. Go keep an eye on our ‘foreign exchange student’ for me.”

Sam’s frown clears in an instant and he heads through the automatic sliding doors of their 3-star hotel. He turns and points at them, making an impressed face, through the glass at Dean.

Dean shakes his head and picks up the phone.

“Can you explain to me why I just received an extremely emotional voicemail from Claire Novak?” Cas growls.

Dean meanders over to the ashtray by the doors. What he wouldn’t give for a cigarette right now. “Um. Hi?”

“Hello,” Castiel adds, perfunctory. “Is she alright?”

Dean sighs. “Yeah, she’s fine. Had a bit of a scare but -”

“Yes, I noticed,” comes the short reply.

Dean bites the inside of his cheek. “Are you… are you mad at me?”

Castiel scoffs. “No. No, I’m…” he sighs. “I just wish I could have been there.”

A shift of his weight puts Dean’s shoulder up against the side of the building. He rests his weight there for a while instead. “I know. And I’m sorry I didn’t call you.”

“You did call me,” Castiel insists. “I heard you. I just got your message too late.”

Dean nods at the ground. “Well, hey, you know. It’s all fine now. Forget I even said anything. Or, prayed anything.”

He hears the fabric of Castiel’s coat rustle in the background as he settles into a new position. Wonder where he is, anyway. “I wish it were that easy. It’s frustrating, being so far away and unable to get anywhere as quickly as I once could. When I’m… when I’m needed.”

Dean hums. “Yeah, that’s gotta suck. Sure that would have come in handy for Claire last night.”

“I meant for you.”

Dean reels. “Me?”

He can practically hear Castiel’s frown over the phone. “Of course. Dean, I could  _feel_ your panic. I doubt I could have actually done anything to help Claire, what with my grace still recovering, but… I wish that I could have been there for you both.”

Dean stands there in stunned silence for a moment, letting that sink in. “It wasn’t a pleasant feeling, knowing you were alone for this. You carry so many burdens, but you know you don’t have to shoulder them by yourself,” Castiel tenderly adds.

Dean swallows. “Thanks. That, um. You’re right. And that means a lot to me.”

“Of course.”

He’s come a long way, this angel - he’s figured out that sometimes all you need is someone that stays. Dean smiles.

“But if you ever leave me out of the loop with something this important again, I’ll never forgive you.”

A laugh bursts out of Dean, bright and honest. “You got it. No secrets, no matter what. I’ve been trying to get better about that.”

“See that you don’t forget.”

Dean kicks a rock and pushes himself off the wall, headed back for the entrance. “Really would have been nice if you could have jet down here for a day or something,” he muses. “Our hotel has a pool.”

Castiel pauses. “Oh?”

“Mmm,” Dean confirms, smirking. “Gotta be careful, though. Some of the occupants like to swim naked.”

He hangs up the phone before Castiel can reply. 

He thinks he’ll probably forgive him for that one, anyway.


	23. 12.17 coda

Kelly doesn’t say a word for a solid twenty minutes. She crosses her arms tight across her chest and huffs, glaring fidgety burning holes into the rearview. When she starts to hiss and groan and her eyes start to water, Dean breaks the silence.

“Hey, you doing ok?”

Kelly clenches her teeth and slides back in the seat, tilting up her hips to relieve some of the pressure. “What do you care,” she spits. She whimpers once, a small and sad sound that wasn’t meant to escape her.

Dean’s hands flutter on the wheel. “Just let me know if you need something,” he says.

Her knee knocks into the back of the passenger’s seat. She takes a breath and starts to sit up, her eyes narrowed. “I  _need_  you to stay out of my business.”

Dean doesn’t respond to that either. He just slams his foot on the gas and keeps moving steadily along, towards safety. 

“Dagon’s not going to be happy when she finds you,” Kelly mutters.

Even if Dagon found them on this nearly empty city highway, she would never be able to get inside the Impala. The old girl’s sigiled to shit. Plus, Sam’s got the Colt. Dean doesn’t tell Kelly any of that, but he does assure her, “We can handle it” with a cold smirk.

His phone beeps on the passenger seat beside him and he all but lunges for the thing, heart racing. It’s amazing how quickly his mind can shift his priorities around.

It’s just a low battery notification.

He has to take a minute for his heart to restart - too big an adrenaline rush for so small a disappointment. He accidentally holds the phone too long, glancing between the screen and the road, and it goes dark in his hand. When he turns it back on again, he doesn’t have any other notifications. He’s tempted to open his texts just to be  _sure_  he hasn’t gotten anything new.

“Expecting a call?” Kelly needles.

Dean shrugs. “I don’t know.” 

He takes a breath and unclenches his hands. Reminds himself to be cool. He can feel his face already flaming. 

Everybody seems to be partnered up on this, and the person that’s usually one step behind him in  _everything_  can’t be bothered to pick up his phone right now. Kelly and Dagon are for some reason clutching tight to each other, Sam’s getting cute with Eileen, Mom and Ketch are working together - Jesus,  _Ketch._ Bad decisions really do run in the family - before he knows it Mick is going to have a new pompous douchebag following him around to replace the ones gunned down by vampires. Even now those BMOL higher ups would come to Mick’s defense in an instant. Regardless, Dean’s the only one that doesn’t have anyone watching his back and it makes him nervous.

Nervous, and some other things.

_Where the hell are you, man?_ he prays again, just for a minute.

“Ah!” Kelly squeals. Her head thuds back against the seat. “Don’t do that!”

Dean startles. “Do what?”

“I don’t know, whatever you just did!” she rubs just beneath the swell of her belly and shakes when the pain subsides. “That hurts the baby.”

He blinks and contemplates rolling down a window for her. Looks like Satan’s baby mama’s new set of powers includes, but is not limited to: bible roasting and hearing prayers like they’re pinpricks. Good for her. 

He sighs. “Yeah, it hurts me too,” he admits, though he doesn’t think that Kelly cares much.

They fall back into silence until the sky goes dark, and the Impala’s headlights fall onto a familiar-looking set of degenerates set up in a gravel ditch. Dean’s eyes and his heart immediately pick out the even numbers as he steps out of the car.

“This everyone?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Sam confirms. “And still no word from Cas.”

Dean rolls his eyes and sincerely hopes that in the dark, Sam won’t be able to pick out how his lip trembles. “Of course,” he grunts. Shamefully breathless, like getting the wind knocked out of him.

It doesn’t dawn on him immediately that the reason Castiel might not be picking up his phone is because something may be preventing him from getting to it. His impulse is to say he just can’t be bothered with Dean right now for some reason, but he does set his own feelings aside long enough on the drive back to the bunker to think dangerous thoughts. Sam’s got his arms wrapped around Eileen in the backseat, rubbing his hands up and down her arms, cheek rested on the top of her head, and Dean’s in the front alone again. Odd man out, empty arms, a pit of dread in his stomach.

_Stay safe up there,_ he prays, before he can even help himself.  _Please, Cas. We’re worried._  He plugs his phone in to charge before he settles in for the night and sets it on the night stand not on his side. He faces it all night. 

His dreams are confusing and unruly and he jolts awake four hours later in a cold sweat with only a guess as to why. He rubs at a phantom pain in his shoulder.

“You think he’s alright?” Sam asks him later. Talking, of course, about Cas like Dean should just know the answer.

Dean thinks for a minute about the last time that a prayer of his went unanswered.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know.” He take a huge gulp of coffee to keep himself from saying anything more. He needs it, too. He’s sore from Dagon’s attack the night before and he stayed up way too late staring at his phone screen, willing for it to ring. (It didn’t). 

And now Eileen has gone home. Claire has split off from Jody and Alex. Kelly’s eyes betray a shiftiness after their meeting that wasn’t there before in the Impala. Mick’s new buddy is dead, shot through the heart. Mick hasn’t come back since assumedly reporting his own version of a code violation to his superiors and Dean’s inclined to think the worst. They’re unraveling, uncoupling, all at once.

He sips his coffee and hopes to high heaven that it isn’t an omen.


	24. 12.18 coda

Sam tells him in the diner that satyrs lure people away with a promise of pleasure just so they can eat them raw.

Dean thinks that well-meaning waitresses might work the same way.

She gives him a smile, a sweet one that’s everything right with a world so far from his own, and he’s able to let go of his stress after days of stewing in desperate silence. She grabs his hand and leads him out back after the dinner rush slows, and Dean knows he won’t be going back to the motel with Sam tonight. He’ll be wandering, bare foot and chasing a half-real high.

And it works. His body takes over as soon as that door shuts and it tells him he’s happy. But he can feel her teeth digging into him just the wrong side of too hard when they kiss. Her nails gouge deep into his shoulders, leave marks, remind him again that he’s hurting. Her pours his passion into her and he leaves himself cold and empty in the process. 

She devours him and she doesn’t even know she’s doing it.

He lies there in bed with her long after she’s curled up and gone to sleep but invited him to stay, facing away from him in a strip of exposed moonlight. Dean runs one hand softly along the swell of his chest, the closed cavity of his heart, just to make sure that he’s still all there. He stays.

Taptaptaps his fingers. Just can’t seem to help himself. Still longing. Still worrying.

He rolls onto her again in the morning after a bad dream wakes him up and they fuck against her bedroom door before they leave. Dean keeps his tie askew even when he drops her off at the restaurant. He arches desperately closer into her in the doorway, seeking warmth, and he forgets to care if anyone is watching him.

* * *

“You got a lot of jokes,” Pete tells him.

Dean scoffs. “Right now that’s about all I got,” he admits, glancing down into his lap. 

His cold cold body, bound alone and helpless. He could die like this.

What a fucking joke.

* * *

His head is still pounding by the time they get back to the Bunker, and he can’t help the traitorous way that his heart picks up when he steps down the stairs. It’s too easy for him to imagine Castiel shuffling around the corner, comfortable and welcoming them home. Every minute that he spends in silence hurts his head a little more. He looks around at the cold, unfeeling walls.

When the world watches him, what will it see? Is this really going to be his legacy?

Sam barely makes him feel better about it even when he smiles over the point of his knife handle, grinning like a kid again. Dean stares down at their freshly-carved initials in the library reading table and picks away at a splinter, half-hoping it will wedge itself into his skin. He contemplatively twirls his knife around in his other hand, staring at the empty space just below his name. It’s tempting.

_Let him do it for himself,_ the calmer part of his mind tells him.  _Let Castiel leave his own mark on this place._

They might not have a god living in their basement, but if they’re lucky someday they’ll get an angel. No sacrifice or padlocks required.

He sits there for a long time thinking about Pete still - about being cast out of his family, making friends in all the wrong places just to be the hero, paying for it with his life. When he figures out why that worries him so much he starts desperately hoping that wherever Castiel is out there, he’s breaking his own cycle and not falling back on bad habits. That’s all he can do: hope and pray.

Dean pockets his knife and sighs.

* * *

Maybe it’s the nervous energy. He hasn’t been right for days, crawling out of his skin and checking too fast over his own shoulder. He just can’t relax. Maybe it’s because he knows he’s alone that he feels too aware of himself. He feels restless in a place that is both his home and his tomb, like everything in his room has been shifted an inch to the left. It’s just enough to throw him off balance and leave him missing something he didn’t quite notice was there before at all.

Something’s just… off.

He does what he always does when he starts feeling like this; he reaches for his night stand to look for that picture of him and his mom. He’s had it since he was very young and it’s the only thing that would ever put his heart at ease. The texture of the worn paper is familiar, and even the shapes of the age-old stains soothe him.

His fingers curl around the knob and he opens the drawer just a bit, just enough to cast the contents hidden away there in shadow, and he hesitates for a very long moment. Things are so different now with them; maybe he shouldn’t look.

He’s saved from having to make the decision by a loud buzzing from his bed. He glances over at his phone, checks the caller ID, and slams the drawer shut without another thought. His neck flushes red hot as he reaches out.

It’s Cas.


	25. 12.19 coda

It’s amazing, really. Castiel has blown him off, lied to him, stolen from him, and broken his god damn heart too many times to count today. But when Dagon raises her hand at him for what Dean thinks must be the last time, it’s still the worst he’s felt all week.

“No!” he screams, before all the breath is punched out of him at once. A golden glow takes over Castiel’s eyes, one that he hasn’t seen before.

He forgets to flinch when Castiel offers to fix his arm. He exposes the most vulnerable parts of himself, again, he never learns, and allows Castiel’s hand on him. His fingers hesitate over the folds of his sleeve, pressing more insistently when Dean doesn’t move away. He hates that he’s being cautious. No, he’s grateful for it. No, he - 

The familiar cold pulse of grace taking root steals his breath away.

“Are you ok?” he asks. Fragile and weak, like it always is with them.

The golden glow has left, but Castiel is still different somehow. He doesn’t slouch; he holds himself with all the confidence of someone that thinks themselves blameless. He’s seen  _that_  look at least once before, back when Castiel still liked to lie and go behind their backs for ultimately selfless reasons.

And he still asks Dean to trust him.

He would. He’s spent his day tracking phones and fixing trucks. It might hurt like a bitch, but this is all he has.

“Don’t,” he begs. A plea, a prayer.

Castiel drops his fingers to Dean’s head, and he doesn’t hesitate at all.

 

He dreams.

He usually doesn’t, when he’s whammied like this.

But he can tell that he’s dreaming because the world shakes and shimmers, and his heart doesn’t ache so much where it still sits cursed in his chest. It’s like Amara in reverse.

“I’m dreaming,” he announces.

_No_ , he hears.  _You’re not._

_Look._

Dean turns his head and listens to the dust shiver around him. It’s humid, and sluggish. Lush and bright and green. Wait a minute; he’s been here before once, a very long time ago.

“Well, everything seems to be in order,” someone says behind him.

He shifts his weight and tries to hide behind an overgrown palm, but it doesn’t seem to matter. The person that comes around the corner looks right through him like he’s not even there.

Dean’s surprised enough to freeze right where he is in the middle of the path. Castiel smiles, but not at him.

“It does, doesn’t it,” Castiel murmurs. “I can’t thank you enough for your work, Charmeine.”

He’s lost the trench coat. His hands are in his pockets and his sleeves are rolled up against the heat. His…

Dean breath catches. Castiel’s face is soft and assured. His eyes shine kindly in the perpetual rising sun in the spaces between the leaves. He rocks back on his dress shoes like he fits into his own skin and is actually happy about it.

The other angel with him, Charmeine, nods. “I’m honored for the opportunity, Castiel. Truly.”

Castiel ducks his head. “You were under Joshua’s tutelage for many years. I’m confident that you are up to the task of managing the Garden in his absence.”

They stare at each other for a minute before Castiel shrugs.

“Well,” he sighs. “I guess that’s… everything.”

Charmeine fondly rolls her eyes. She’s wearing a full suit, but the top button of her shirt is undone. “Go  _home_ , Castiel. Everything will be fine.”

Castiel looks up at smiles at her. “Yes. For once, I think it will be.”

Castiel turns and walks away from the spot, with his back to Dean. As he goes, he trails his fingers along the edges of the wild grasses encroaching on the path. The backs of his hands are tan and smooth.

Maybe this isn’t a dream after all, because Dean’s heart pounds so hard in his chest that it makes him dizzy.

He follows, before he loses him again. Even if it does turn out to be only a dream.

He steps around the giant mushrooms, tramples the wildflowers, and sticks close. Castiel walks leisurely. He absentmindedly pulls his cellphone out of his pocket and twirls it around in his hand. He starts to  _whistle_.

“What kind of bizarro world have I been whammied into?” he mumbles to himself.

_It’s still your world,_  the voice from before tells him.  _It’s just the future._

Dean freezes. Castiel keeps walking and starts to put distance between them.

“The future,” he repeats skeptically.

_Yes._

Well, it’s not drugs and sex, that’s for sure.

Dean fixes his jaw. Castiel’s hair glints in the sun as he rolls his shoulders. “So you’re him. The - the nephilim.”

_Of course._

“How are we even talking right now?”

_We don’t have long. When Castiel healed you, a part of me -_

“Screw it, I don’t actually care,” Dean mumbles. He’s still watching Castiel walk away from him, further and further into the Garden. Or, out of it, really. “This isn’t real. This is just what you want me to see.”

The voice - the nephilim spirit or what the fuck ever - doesn’t speak again. Dean’s left standing alone in a mostly empty garden in the center of heaven, and birds sing all around him. Water trickles somewhere nearby. Flowers roll their petals in a phantom breeze, waving in time with the Song.

Castiel is almost a speck in the distance, but Dean can still hear his ringtone when it sounds. Zeppelin, like the mix tape.

“Hello, Dean. Yes, I’m heading home now. Ok. Yes, I know. Yes. Alright, I will. I’ll see you soon. I love you.”

Dean shuts his eyes.

 

He wakes up in tears. It takes him a second to figure out that they aren’t actually tears, but the same light dusting of dewdrops clinging to his lashes that coat the collar of his jacket. Sam is still knocked out. The Impala’s parked a little ways in front of them.

No fresh footsteps in the sand.

He sits up and groans, running a hand through his hair. More dew. He shivers. All the warmth from his dream in the Garden has left him.

Just like everything else, apparently.

“Hey,” Dean croaks, kicking Sam’s shoulder. His leg barely even responds to the command. Damn, Castiel really  _has_ powered up. “Wake up, Sammy.”

Sam stirs and groans like Dean had. He decides to take the initiative and slumps over, grabbing two fistfuls of Sam’s hideous coat. “Come on. Up.”

Half-asleep, he and Sam manage to stumble back to the Impala. It takes Dean two tries to fit the keys into the ignition, but he gets them there in the end. Sam conks his head against the window and doesn’t move until they’re halfway home.

“Did you grab - the Colt, Dean,” Sam slurs.

“Who cares,” Dean mutters, focusing his hardest on just staying in his lane. His eyesight’s still kind of wobbly. “It’s useless anyway.”

He’s expecting a token protest. That beautiful mind whirs and it never stops, always searching for a way out, always planning the next step, Sam’s always been dreaming for a brighter future. He’s reliable that way.

But this time an objection doesn’t come. Dean glances over and his brother looks positively murderous, gritting his teeth and clenching his fists against his thighs.

“Sam?”

Sam shakes his head. “That  _bastard_. That fucking -”

“Hey,” Dean objects.

“How are you still defending him?” Sam whips his head around, suddenly much more awake than before. “After what he did to you!”

Dean whiteknuckles the steering wheel. As much as it pains him, he can still see Castiel walking away from him in the garden on repeat, with his soft smile and his wrinkled sleeves. He swallows hard and loosens his grip. “I just…”

Sam’s fight goes out of him all at once. “Yeah, ok, I know.” A wry laugh punches itself out of him, his body jerking with the motion. “Under your  _pillow_ , man.”

Dean’s face heats. A horn blares behind him and he corrects the car’s position at the last second. He gets a finger out the driver’s side window for his trouble, and isn’t that just great. “You learned  _sign language_  for a Skype date, Sam, you don’t get to judge me.”

Sam barks a laugh and sinks into his seat again, smoothing his hair down. It’s a self-conscious gesture, an apology wrapped up in nervous fidgeting. “We’re fucking hopeless. You and me. We have the worst luck in love.”

“Seriously, we’re cursed,” Dean mutters.

His phone in his pocket - miraculously - chooses that moment to start ringing.

Sam grabs it before Dean can.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Dean scolds.

Sam rejects the call and flings it into the backseat. “You’re driving, dude. Pick it up again when we get back to the bunker.”

Dean glares. “Was it… Um. Did he -”

Sam frowns, shoulders sagging. “It wasn’t him, Dean.”

Dean purses his lips and nods. “Then it can wait.”

Sam nods too, and he does the only thing he can think of. He flips on the radio. 

He throws an elbow into Dean’s side with a companionable grin. “Hey, Zeppelin! Your favorite.”

Dean slams it off, and the car is drenched in silence.

Sam waits for an explanation.

He doesn’t get one, but he still knows.

He knows.

 

There’s a lock on Dean’s bedroom door that he’s never used. The key sits untouched in a desk drawer.

He might hate himself for it later, but even after everything, he’s not about to start using it now.


	26. 12.20 additional scene

“Is that a grenade launcher?”

Dean grins. “Yes it is.”

They stand there for a minute in appreciative silence. Max’s grin widens.

“So…” he singsongs. “You want to show me the backseat next?”

Dean looks up, does a double take.

Max raises his eyebrows. “Later, maybe,” he suggests. No shame, all gall.

Dean gapes. He says the first thing that comes to mind which happens to be, “Uh. I’m - it’s -  _complicated_.”

Max’s smug look slips off his face. “Oh, my bad. Didn’t mean to -”

“Nah, man. It’s cool.”

They both clear their throats at the same time.

Dean just can’t shut his stupid mouth. He’s been trying to talk about this all day with Sam and he got the stone wall. “It’s, just. My, um. The angel, you know?”

Max’s eyes widen a little. “Huh. Ok. Didn’t think there was anything to  _that_  rumor.” He purses his lips. “Nice.”

Dean coughs. “Yeah, it’s. Yeah. Sam!”


	27. 12.20 coda

Max’s eyes get this predatory gleam in them when he looks down into the Impala. Big guns; they’ve always impressed people. It’s a look Dean recognizes in his own face, the same youth-bright passion for really cool shit. He can’t help smirking a bit as he watches Max lean over the trunk.

“So. Bartender’s number, huh?” Dean says.

Max smirks too, still drinking in the Impala’s arsenal in all her splendor. “Oh yeah. Got a date tonight, in fact. Wouldn’t mind showing him the backseat of this baby,” he purrs.

Dean blinks. “Him?”

Max straightens, frowns at him. “Uh, yeah,” he scoffs. “Problem?”

Dean shakes his head, so fast that the world tips on its side for a minute. “Just making conversation,” he coughs.

Max still looks kind of hesitant, though. He takes a step back from Dean and ducks his head to inspect the rims.

Dean watches the back of his head as he does. Young guy, sister that loves him and sticks with him, a mother he adores and doesn’t have to worry about so much. A hot dude bartender’s number.

Dean swallows past a sudden lump in his throat.

_This is everything I could have had._

“Sam,” he barks, to cover up the thickness in his voice.

Alicia and Sam head over and get in the car. They’re still chatting amiably, but Max meets his eyes over the top and stares.

Dean can’t face him. He casts his eyes down. He floors it to the bed and breakfast where Tasha is supposed to be staying and hopes with everything he has that this bad feeling in his gut is just projection.

* * *

Dean had, like, a little too much wine. He was just starting to get into it before Sam pulled that dead guy’s picture out of his pocket. But now that he’s behind the wheel, leaving yet another town and its ghost stories in the rearview, the buzz is totally gone. He doesn’t feel like laughing much anymore. He’s mostly wondering how the hell Sam convinced him to leave Max there, unsupervised and grieving.

Hell, he knows what  _he_ would do in that situation. He doesn’t even have to imagine it; it’s all right there in his memories. A whole decade ago, Jesus.

 _Everything I could have had,_ he’d thought earlier.  _Guess neither of us gets to keep it._

Bizarrely, he wonders about the hot bartender. Where was Max supposed to meet him? Surely not the vegan restaurant - bartender wouldn’t want to have a first date where he works. Some other bar then, to meet for drinks and maybe eat, maybe skip the food altogether. How long must he have sat there, waiting for Max, checking his phone? He probably sent a few texts.  _Hey, where are you? Everything ok? Fine, don’t call me then._ Was he pissed off, or just disappointed? Sad, even?

Dean drives himself in circles imagining it. Maybe that guy will never know. He’ll forget all about the whirlwind out-of-towner that could have changed his life and find someone else to be happy with. Or maybe Max will pick up his phone while he drives away through the night and see the texts. Maybe he’ll take pity on the guy and explain.  _Family trouble, not in a good place right now._

Maybe the guy will understand. Maybe they’ll work it out. Dean hopes for that option. For that slim chance at happiness in an otherwise shitty situation.

The kid deserves somekind of happy ending, doesn’t he?

Don’t they?

Sam isn’t awake to judge him, so Dean grits his teeth and he says to himself, to any small part of the rushing world that may be listening in the dead of night: “Yeah, I do.”

* * *

Shockingly, Dean has no new messages. No texts. Nothing. It’s dumb to wish for but he still keeps wishing for them despite himself.

He doesn’t want to even think about stopping at the bunker before speeding straight to Mary, because Tasha Banes dying in her children’s absence is not exactly a good omen, but Sam grounds him. As usual. 

“We only brought enough to take on one witch, Dean. We need to restock. Form a plan. We don’t even know what we’re walking into, here!”

Dean slams the door a little too hard as he steps out of the car. “I know, I know, you already said all that. I’m not mad, I promise.”

He’s mad. Just not at Sam.

Sam follows him to the bunker and stands behind him with his hands in his pockets when Dean goes through the keys, muttering himself until he finds the one for the front door. “How  _are_  you feeling, then?”

Dean pauses and looks over at him. “Wrecked. You?”

“Awful,” Sam admits, face crumbling.

Dean purses his lips and ticks his head to the side. “Sounds about right.”

He twists the key in the lock and pushes open the heavy door with a creak. He winces. “Should fix that,” he mutters, descending the stairs. Sam follows.

“I’m serious, Dean,” Sam says. “We should -”

“What, talk about it?” Dean grumbles, sticking his keys back into the pocket of his jacket.

Sam throws up his hands. “I’d like to, yeah!” he says, loud into the echoing chamber of the war room. He licks his lips. “Alicia died! I was right there and I couldn’t…” He shakes his head. “Everything that’s going on with Max, if I had just -”

“Hey, come on,” Dean says, stepping closer and frowning deeply at Sam’s watery eyes. “That is  _not_ your fault. You did not do this.”

Sam scoffs and wipes a hand down his face. “I know that, I guess. Doesn’t make it suck any less.” His mouth twitches. “Kind of like the whole Cas thing, huh?”

Dean grits his teeth. “How long you been sitting on that one?”

Sam moves his hand to his hair, smoothing it down and tugging a little on each pass. “Since yesterday?” he sighs. “After the whole, ‘That’s not the man I love,’ or whatever.”

Dean gapes. “I  _never -_ I didn’t say -”

Sam straightens, back ramrod straight. “Dean.”

Dean turns, and without a word between them men in suits start firing guns.

* * *

“So,” Mary says, when everything is said and done. A cut on her eyebrow bleeds sluggishly into her hair, dying the feathery ends quite a grisly shade of pink. “You wanted to talk.”

Dean grimaces. The beer he’s holding against his swollen jaw isn’t even cold anymore and Mary sounds positively chipper. He twists off the cap and grunts. 

“I did say that, didn’t I,” he grumbles. He takes a sip of the lukewarm beer. “Moment of weakness.”

“Don’t be like that,” Mary says. Her shoulders droop. “I was kind of… looking forward to it,” she admits.

Dean raises an eyebrow. “You were?”

She nods. “Yeah, I was.” She grabs her own beer off the Impala’s hood and twists off the cap almost absentmindedly. “You have an interesting life. I’m excited to actually be a part of it.”

Dean smiles a little despite himself. He looks at the ground and kicks a pebble with his toe. “Well, that’s good.” He nods and raises his beer to his lips again. “Real good.”

Mary sighs and tilts her head. “So, what was it, anyway? Brother stuff, car trouble, boy problems?”

Dean flushes. “Are you actually qualified to give  _me_ advice on  _car trouble_?”

Mary punches him in the shoulder.

Dean laughs a little, but the act doesn’t stick. He sighs. “The, um. The last one.”

A sound to the left catches Mary’s attention; she turns her head to look. But still she replies, “I had a feeling, when Castiel didn’t show up with you. And something about your voice.”

Dean nods. She nudges him with her elbow. “Look.”

Dean follows her gaze. Sam and Eileen are making out in the middle of the street, bloody and beat up but still alive and kicking.

Dean raises his beer in a silent toast. “Well, I’m glad it’s working out for somebody.”

Mary’s amused smile melts into a frown. “It’s not some miracle, Dean. You could have…”

Dean thinks about Max Banes, about this life he’d built only to have it ripped away in one fell swoop. He could do everything right and still have it be -  _g_ _one, just like that,_ he’d told Sam in the car. A hot bartender waiting at an empty table no matter how hard he tries.

“It’s not always up to me.”

Mary hums and chews on that for a while. They sip their beers side by side. Eventually they hear Eileen’s truck start up and gravel crunch underneath Sam’s feet as he walks up. He’s bright red and scratching the back of his neck. “So, um, she’s just going to -”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean mutters, fighting a smile. “Hope you brushed your teeth this morning.”

Mary snickers and Sam bristles, grabbing a beer of his own from the cooler by Mary’s elbow. “So what’s next?”

Obviously, the answer is Lucifer’s baby. And tracking down Kelly means -

Well, it means going after Castiel. It means not going home alone like a stood-up date.

Dean frowns. “Don’t really know,” he says. He downs the rest of his beer in one long gulp. “But I’m tired of waiting around for it.”

Mary peeks at him out of the corner of her eyes. She nods, almost imperceptibly, and raises her beer to him. 


	28. 12.21 coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> doing the best with what i got here, friendos. grateful to [this post.](http://oh-jesus-sammy.tumblr.com/post/160568218207/kill-toni-and-save-the-oxygen)

Her eyes snap open past a sheen of cold sweat. It still clings to her forehead, soaks the back of her neck, tangles her hair. She can’t even bring herself to sit up for how bad she’s shaking. 

Mary has no option but to ride it out. She can’t help but think she’s done this before.

When the tremors pass she pushes herself to a sitting position. Hunched over, she fights the urge to vomit. She’s got a headache that she wouldn’t choose over a bullet.

The door clicks open. She lifts her eyes, but it’s a struggle to do so. Her vision is blurry.

“Hello, Mary,” someone says to her. She blinks. “How are we feeling this morning?”

Mary squints. Brown hair. Deep-set eyes. Fat wrists.

“Where - ” she pauses to cough. “Where is…  _she_?” she asks.

The new woman in front of her tilts her head. “She?”

Mary winces. Her head hurts something fierce. “Ponytail,” she whimpers. She looks up and realizes that this woman is wearing a ponytail as well. 

But her hair is too dark. It’s not right. She’s never seen this woman before. Her gut just knows.

“I don’t know what you mean, Mary,” the woman says. Her voice is soft and sweet, lilting with the accent.

Mary closes her eyes. “What about… um. Ketch,” she says, pleased she can at least remember one name. “I want to talk to him.”

The woman’s eyes go sad, pitying in the most insincere way. “He’s indisposed at the moment, I’m afraid. But I’d be happy to talk with you, mum.”

_Mom!_

Mary hisses and falls back against her cot. The woman doesn’t move forward to help her.

Mary looks down at her lap. There’s blood smeared there.

A cut on her hand is open and stinging. The stitches have torn. 

Or… maybe they were already torn.

The woman sighs and reaches for the door knob. “It’s no good,” she says somewhere to her left. Mary blacks out a minute later.

* * *

Two days, Ketch had said. Two days, and the boys’ oxygen would run out.

How long is two days?

Two days is the exact amount of time that she and John had spent at that abandoned shack behind the firehouse, in the woods across the train tracks when they were just kids with big dreams. He’d smiled so big at her and touched her in stolen candlelight and she remembers she’d have given anything to have her heart sing like that for the rest of her life.

She holds on to that warmth now. That memory. It’s what she’s got.

“My name is Mary Winchester,” she whispers to herself, facing away from the door. “John Winchester is my husband. Sam and Dean are my boys. I am a prisoner.”

Two days felt like a lifetime then. It feels like nothing now.

They come for her again too soon. She keeps track of the time by singing Stairway to Heaven back to back to back. She’s sure she loses a few hours here and there because she forgets some of the words. She tries to keep tallies in the concrete floor with a screw from her cot but her fingers are too weak to close around it all the way.

“My name is Mary Winchester,” she whispers. “John Winchester is my husband. Sam and Dean are my boys. I am a prisoner. And I have to get out.”

But nobody’s coming. She can barely hold herself up. 

_Mom!_ That voice still haunts her. The same now as it was back then.

How the hell is she going to get back to her boys in less than two days?

* * *

Dean’s exhausted all his energy pounding on the metal door to the outside world. Sam just watched, silent tears collecting on his cheeks, and tried to think of a way out.

“Ok, new plan,” Dean croaks at last. “We shoot her to conserve oxygen.”

Toni tosses a blithe look in his direction. “Please, by all means. Here.” She even hands her gun over. “Put me out of my misery.”

“No, we need her,” Sam mumbles half-heartedly. “She’s the only one that can get us into where they’re keeping Mom.”

Dean goes quiet, shoulders rigid. 

“What an excellent idea, Sam,” Toni applauds. “Seek out the woman that locked us in here in the first place. Brilliant.”

Dean snarls, “You did this to her. You can fix it.”

“The damage is likely irreversible,” Toni says. “Wish I was sorry about it, but I’m really not.”

Sam wipes a hand down his face, and pauses. “The garage,” he says.

Dean’s eyes light up. “The  _trunk_.”

Sam laughs, a little delirious. “Now’s the time, dude.”

“Whatever you’re planning, it won’t work.”

Sam grabs Toni’s arm so hard he’s sure it will bruise. “Shut. The hell. Up.”

With his other hand, he tears Eileen’s letter out of the front pocket of his jacket, the one right up against his heart. “This? Is your fault. All of this is  _your fault_. I will never see this woman again because of you.” He breathes deep and pulls himself up taller. “Maybe you can live with that. But I’m going to make sure you live to  _regret_  it.”

Toni snatches her arm back and Dean clomps down the stairs. “I might never see my son again either, but you don’t hear me  _whining_ about it,” she hisses.

Dean glares at her. “So mom to mom. Help us help her.”

Toni glares back at him. She doesn’t say a word, so Dean shoves past her and all but sprints to the garage.

 

Dean throws open the door and skids to the Impala. The keys slip in his hands but he opens the trunk and could nearly cry with relief. “Ha!” he does yell. The sound echoes off the concrete. He hears Sam and Toni’s clipped footsteps behind him on the floor and he rests his forehead on the metal of the trunk.

“Baby,” he moans. “You are the only one that’s ever been there for me 100% of the time.”

“Dean?” Sam asks.

Dean hoists the grenade launcher up onto his shoulder. “Word of advice,” he directs to Toni. “Don’t lock us up in a fortress full of big guns.”

He might be imagining it, but there may be an impressed twinkle in Toni’s beady little eyes.

* * *

“Castiel?”

Castiel opens his eyes. 

Kelly, rubbing her stomach, frowns down at him where he’s seated on the bed. “Is everything alright?”

Castiel sighs. “No. No, everything is not alright.”

Kelly sits down and reaches out her hand. He flinches away from it.

She retracts it slowly, fingers curling into themselves with all the hesitancy of rejection. “Is it the angels? Are they after us?”

Castiel grits his teeth and snaps his head over. “Could you for once worry about something other than yourself?”

Kelly’s eyes flash with hurt. 

“I am making a tremendous sacrifice by being here with you, Kelly,” Castiel says. “I believe in you and your son, I do, but my own family is suffering and I can’t be there because - because - ”

Kelly’s hand falls on his shoulder. A little power seeps through the point of contact and it calms him. Reminds him of his purpose.

“I never had a mother,” he tells her. “But there is one person that, I felt, could maybe be…”

Kelly waits for him to finish, but he just splays his hands.

She rubs his shoulder and squeezes. “Is she praying to you?”

Castiel sags. “Yes. It’s faint, but it’s there.”

It’s an effort - always is these days - but Kelly hauls herself back to her feet. Castiel reaches out to steady her but she waves him off. She draws herself up to her full height, small as it is.

“I know that I’m asking a lot from you,” she tells him. “I’ve betrayed and lied to you so many times before. And I know that you’re only here because you trust me to be there for my son in the future.” She takes a steadying breath. 

“The least I can do is make sure your mother is there for you, too.”

He’s already shaking his head, face cracked with agony. Torn. “We can’t risk - ”

“He’ll protect me,” Kelly says, closing a protective hand around her navel. “You know he will. You’ve witnessed his power.”

Castiel averts his eyes. He’s still not entirely sure what happened in the park, only remembers snatches of it, but there is no denying the incredible force concealed within Kelly’s womb.

She tilts her head. “You doubt that?”

Castiel shakes his head. “No, I don’t.” He stands. “Alright.”

Kelly smiles at him. “I may not act like it sometimes, but I do have a heart, Castiel.”

Not entirely sure he can believe her, Castiel smiles regardless. He takes the duffle bag of clothes that Kelly has accumulated in her time on the road with him and follows her out of their shared motel room.

The cleaning service woman is out in the hallway, and she waves at them as they pass. “Good luck to the happy couple,” she wishes them with a broad smile.

“We are not a couple,” Castiel tells her in passing. Kelly smiles and just says ‘thank you.’

“We have to work on your people skills,” Kelly tells him, buttoning her jacket.

“I won’t lie anymore than I have to,” Castiel tells her, rolling his eyes. “I’ll drive.”

“I was hoping we could stop at the Wendy’s we passed on the way in? I am having a major craving for fries and a Frosty,” Kelly says, holding the door to the reception area open for Castiel.

His incredulous glare sends her face coloring. 

“Kidding. Geez. Sense of humor needs some work too, I guess.”

Castiel steams. “I’ve been told I’m getting funnier.”

“Right,” Kelly scoffs. “Which Winchester told you that?”

Castiel’s throat feels thick. He doesn’t answer. He directs all of his attention to the receptionist and informs her that they’ll be checking out.

He taps his fingers impatiently as the receptionist takes down his fake information.

“You’re all set,” she chirps. “Have a nice day.”

“You too,” Kelly says. Castiel is already rushing for the door. She waddles to catch up.

Castiel twists the keys into the trucks ignition and angrily flicks off the stereo. Kelly frowns at him and turns it on again, low.

Castiel sighs and closes his eyes. “Please turn it off. I don’t want to - ”

Kelly’s frown only deepens. “This is all you would play on the way here. It’s your favorite.” She ejects the tape and takes it before Castiel can reach for it, possessively tuck it back into the pocket against his heart, and Kelly’s face clears once she gets a better look at it. “Oh.”

Castiel clenches his jaw and returns his outstretched hand to the wheel.

“I didn’t realize that it was like that.”

“It’s not,” Castiel says. He laughs once, bitter. “Not after… not now anyway.”

Kelly sighs and taps the tape against her hand. Castiel watches the words bounce up and down out of the corner of his eye:  _Dean’s Top 13 Zepp Traxx_. “This mom we’re going to rescue wouldn’t happen to be your in-law, would it?”

Castiel sighs. “She’s not my…” He snaps his mouth shut. “Yes, I suppose that’s the closest way to explain it,” he settles on.

Kelly nods. “I think he approves,” she says, rubbing her belly. “He’s been kicking like crazy since we left the motel.”

“Maybe he just likes Zeppelin.”

Kelly smiles. “Zeppelin. That would make a good baby name.”

Castiel fights a smile of his own. It fades as another prayer comes in.

_Two days, two days, don’t let me forget, Castiel._

Confused and concerned, Castiel lays on the gas.

* * *

“Ok,” Dean gasps, brushing rubble from his shoulders. “New plan: find Mom,  _fix_  Mom, waste Ketch.”

Sam nods, coughing around concrete dust. “Yeah, good plan.”

Toni rocks a little unsteadily on her kitten heels. “You… you  _blew_   _up_  - ”

“Yeah. And it was awesome,” Dean fawns, patting the grenade launcher. He takes a deep breath of fresh air and revels in their newfound freedom for exactly two seconds before kicking into high gear. “Now let’s go.”

Back to her old self in no time, Toni pulls a gun out of the back of her skirt. “Actually, I have a better idea.”

Dean lets out a frustrated shout. “Where did you even get that?” he cries.

“Swiped it from the trunk when you weren’t looking,” Toni says. She unclicks the safety and points it at Dean. “I personally would like to make a clean getaway while I have the opportunity.”

Sam purses his lips. 

“Airport,” Toni commands. “Now. You can drive if you want. I quite like the backseat.”

Sam narrows his eyes. “So you’re running away?”

Toni swivels her head and glares at him. “You heard Ketch. The Men of Letters and their ungrateful matriarch aren’t going to protect me anymore. Once they’ve found out I’ve gone, they’ll stop at nothing to kill me just like they killed your friend.”

Sam fights the impulse to take a swing at her and Toni’s eyes dart away for a moment. “Besides. Being locked up in there - however briefly - it did make me reconsider my priorities.” The gun tilts a little in her grip. “Maybe your mother had the right idea coming back to you boys.”

Dean takes advantage of Toni’s momentary distraction to twist the gun out of her grip. She shrieks, and it goes off into the ground. Sam shields his face from the spray of dirt and rushes forward to help.

“You fix what you broke,” Dean tells her, pressing the gun to her side. “Then you go home.”

Sam smirks at her. “That’s the American way.”

Toni glares, but has no choice to accompany them to the Impala.

Dean’s been used to feeling like he’s failed his mom since he was four years old and watched his house go up in flames. He will not fail her again when she needs him most.

_We’re coming, Mom,_ Dean thinks. 

* * *

The Impala pulls up outside the BMOL compound at the exact same time that the godforsaken truck does.

Dean gets out of the car and slams the door as hard as it’ll go.

“You son of a  _bitch_ ,” he snarls.

Castiel’s eyes go wide as Dean slams him by the lapels into the side of the truck. He doesn’t even see him coming, Dean moves that fast across the road. “Dean,” he murmurs, dazed.

“Stop,” Kelly says to his right. “Let him go.”

“Oh, I’ll get to you next, lady,” Dean hisses.

Castiel just blinks at him. “I should have assumed you would be - ”

Dean punches him right in the face.

Kelly gasps. Sam glares over his brother’s shoulder, unforgiving. 

“Delightful,” Toni says in a laugh.

Castiel coughs and nods. “I deserved that.”

“Yeah,” Dean growls. “You did.” 

He shoves Castiel’s head against the window and lets go, pushing himself off and putting some distance between them. His shoulders are tight as he walks towards the compound.

“You coming or what?” he asks, practically yelling.

Castiel frowns at his back, blood in his teeth. “You’ll let me?”

“Well I’m sure as shit not letting you out of my sight again, you fuck up!” Dean pulls the gun out of his pants and cocks it, grumbling to himself. “Unbel _ievable_ ,” he adds in a shout. He kills the two guards by the door with one hand, he’s that pissed.

The rest of the party follows after him, dazed. 

“I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of meeting,” Toni says. “Hello, I’m Lady Bevell.”

“Go to hell,” Castiel mutters. He burns out the security camera as he stalks after Dean.


	29. 12.22/12.23 coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Since 12.22 and 12.23 were shown back to back, I only wrote one coda.

It was a proper burial.

Sam helped Dean scrape Castiel’s limp body off the charred ground and lifted from his knees like a pallbearer, head bowed as they made their way to the Impala. They laid Castiel out along the back seat and tucked his trench coat in so it wouldn’t get caught in the door. It was a very long drive home, Dean looking up into the rearview out of habit and disbelief and only meeting stone cold eyes.

“Jack’s gone,” Sam explained. “I only saw him for a second. He just vanished.”

“I don’t care,” Dean croaked.

Neither of them said anything for the rest of the drive.

Not 24 hours ago they had been chipping their way out of the ground with axes and spades, rising up from their tomb like men revived, and now the cycle has to begin all over again. With shovels, and a turn of the earth, and panic that sits high in the chest. 

Sam grips his shoulder too tight. Dean barely even feels it. 

“I need a minute,” he whispers.

“Of course, yeah,” Sam tells him, soft and sad and wrecked from crying. “I’ll be inside, ok? Come find me.”

Dean doesn’t nod, doesn’t respond, but Sam pats him on the back again, lingering, and begins the one-man funeral march back to the bunker.

Back underground.

Dean stands out there for a long time. Sam dutifully waits and looks at all the empty spaces in their home. There isn’t anything physical left to remember the angel by. There’s a knock on the door eventually and Sam gets up to get it, but it’s not Dean.

He opens his eyes to the surface world again and there is this  _crowd_ at his door, some well dressed and some not, some shaking and some statue-still. One woman steps forward with wide and watery eyes.

“We’ve come to pay our respects,” she tells him.

Sam openly gapes. “He’s, um. He’s out back.”

“We all felt it. Heard him, when he - ”

Sam shakes his head.

He leads the grieving to the small plot of land where his brother stands exactly where he left him, staring at the small mound of dirt that covers his best friend.

The angels circle around him silently, whispering words under their breath or closing their eyes or some even holding hands.  _He made so many mistakes,_ Sam hears one of them say.  _Yes, but he was the best of any of us._

Dean doesn’t seem to notice them at first. He wipes his nose with his sleeve and half-turns, seeking out the steady weight of Sam.

An angel catches him by the elbow and his hands dart up to his midsection, ready to push away or punch if need be. But the blow never comes. The angel takes both of Dean’s hands in his and leans forward. “I am deeply sorry for your loss,” he murmurs.

He steps back, and Dean looks down at his hands. Curled into his palms is a bundle of new hydrangea blossoms, blue and velvet soft. The petals wave in the slight breeze, wink in the sunlight. 

He stares at the flowers for a while. He knows what the gesture is supposed to mean. He knows why they stare too long at him here because they don’t give Sam the same gifts. They can all feel the many ways he’s breaking apart.

He spreads his fingers and tosses the flowers to the ground. He shoves his cursed hands into his pockets and stomps back to the bunker.

The sea parts for him. Someone touches his arm. 

It doesn’t take away the pain.

* * *

It’s quiet down here. Always has been and likely always will be. He’s never been so aware of the rasping wheeze of the air vents as he is after their  _Shawshank_  breakout. He counts the number of times they click on and off and when he loses count, he starts all over. He might as well be carving tally marks into the cement of his bedroom walls for how trapped he feels.

A small knock lands on his door. “Dean?”

He doesn’t look away from his chosen spot on the ceiling. He breathes and he resents himself for it.

“Dean,” Sam sighs. “You gotta… you have to eat something,” he says from the doorway. Not entering, just leaning. “Please, man. Come on.”

Dean turns his head away from the door.

Sam sighs again and shuffles away. Dean shuts his eyes.

 

“Dean,” Castiel growls, in that lovely dark voice of his.

Dean sliiides his hands up up up, feeling every curve of skin, every hard edge, thumbing over Castiel’s bare chest - “Yeah, baby,” Dean whispers. “Come on, Cas, come on.”

Castiel rolls his hips flush to Dean’s, and those long fingers come up to sink into the soft flesh at his hips, push and knead and give and cherish. “Come on, Cas,” Dean says again, head bowed.

Castiel arches his back, neck bared and shining with sweat as he throws his head back against Dean’s pillows. His beautiful fingers twitch in the low lamplight. Dean’s hard as a rock and is so close, so so close, just look at him, look at how perfect this is, Castiel’s jaw gapes open and blue light spills out -

Dean’s eyes snap open with a gasp, right at climax. He feels groggy and his breathing is harsh and frantic to his own ears; when he reaches out to the other side of the bed his hands only meet cold sheets and empty space.

His throat clicks when he swallows. His shame strangles him while the come in his shorts dries tacky and uncomfortable.

He brings a shaking hand up to his eyes, and this is when Dean finally starts to cry.

Chest-wracking sobs turn to dry heaving, lip-biting and soul-shaking  _anguish_. It’s so quiet, so empty, apart from him. He’s left with a pounding headache that does nothing to distract him from how shitty the rest of him feels and muscle spasms in his chest that make his lungs burn with the effort of refilling themselves. 

Wide awake now even though his body feels bone tired, Dean finally hauls himself up out of bed and shuffles to the showers. He cleans himself off clinically and efficiently. He sniffs and runs a towel through his hair. He goes up the stairs and checks to make sure that the door still opens, and then he goes outside, bare foot in his robe.

One angel is always standing vigil in the woods over Castiel’s grave. Dean can see the faint outline of today’s guardian now, dressed in a long dress that touches the ground and stirs up the pine needles. 

He thinks about going over, but ultimately doesn’t. He just stares from a distance to torture himself a little bit and then goes back downstairs, locking the door behind him.

It feels very… final.

* * *

He cries again when he finds a feather stuck to the bottom of his boots. He notices at breakfast, when Sam is trying to smile past his own pain for Dean’s sake and serving him cup after cup of hot coffee because it’s the only thing that Dean will eat. 

He gently pries it off by the tail, a flimsy charred and fragile thing, and turns it in his fingers. He’s almost surprised that it doesn’t crumble to dust in his grip.

“Dean?”

Dean opens his mouth, but like every other time he’s tried to say something this week nothing comes out. He chokes, and he can feel his ears turn red and hot when the first of his tears start to fall.

“Dean,” Sam consoles, reaching out.

Dean doesn’t flinch away when Sam grabs his head, yanks it against his stomach and pets his hair down. He doesn’t fight it. He just goes where Sam leads him and pinches his burned-up feather.

“Fuck,” Dean croaks.

It’s the first thing he’s said since the drive home. 

“I know,” Sam murmurs, his own voice sounding a little wobbly now. “I  _know_ , Dean. This  _sucks_.”

Dean hides his runny nose in the folds of Sam’s shirt and shakes his head. He places the feather on the table. 

“I’m ok,” he hears himself say. “I’m fine, Sam.”

Sam breathes out. It’s not quite a laugh, but it’s just as hysterical. “No, Dean. You’re not.”

 

There’s another bundle of flowers left at the bunker’s door. Dean nearly squashes them on accident when he goes outside for the day. 

He stares at them and kicks them as hard as he can with his healed leg.

“STOP LEAVING THESE HERE!” he shouts into the world. “I DON’T WANT THEM!”

He seethes, kicking another set of blue petals. “You want to give me something useful? Bring him  _back!”_

He turns to leave on that dramatic note, but he ends up ramming his shoulder into the doorframe. “FUCK!” he screams, rubbing at it. It doesn’t even hurt that badly, he is just so - he’s  _so…_

He slams the door.

* * *

Sam looks at him like he’s a bomb he has to diffuse. His hands are folded on top of the library table and he isn’t even pretending to read his tablet or look for signs of Jack Kline, the next immediate danger. Dean ignores him, or tries to at least, but eventually it becomes unbearable.

“You know,” Sam says cautiously. “You don’t have to help with this if you don’t want to.”

Dean looks up from his computer.

Sam licks his lips. “I’m just saying. I know we use work to distract ourselves, but this thing with the Brits, I mean…”

Sam squares his shoulders. “I handled it. I can handle this too, so you don’t have to.“

Dean blinks at him, big and sad. “Ok.”

Sam frowns. “Ok?”

Dean shuts his laptop and itches his chin. “Yeah, uh. Ok.”

Sam stares him down across the table for a minute. A long minute. Searching his face, tilting his head. “What are you thinking about?”

Dean laughs once, a harsh and weird-sounding thing. “Crowley, actually.”

Sam reels. “ _Why_?”

Dean shrugs. “‘I was so focused on keeping my job, I never realized I hated it,’” he quotes. “He said that. Sitting right there,” Dean adds, pointing at the seat to his right.

Sam looks like he wants to smile. “Hate your job?”

Dean nods. “Right now? Yeah, I do. And if you’re giving me an out, man, I’m sure as hell gonna take it.”

Sam looks like he’s about to say something, but Dean’s phone vibrates on the table next to him.

“It’s Claire,” Dean sighs. “I gotta take this.”

Sam nods and picks up his tablet again. “Yeah, man. You do what you gotta do.”

“Thanks, Sammy.”

“Jerk,” Sam tries.

Dean hesitates. He drops his shoulders. “Bitch.”

 

Sam goes out on solo road trips. The American hunter network is tighter than ever after the Men of Letters’ witch hunt - so few of them left to count on - and Sam has a lot of intel that he didn’t access before. He takes a dark blue truck from the garage and speeds off to chase down his clues.

Dean stays behind. At home. He takes a good while just smashing stuff, but that loses its appeal pretty quickly. 

He follows up with Garth, takes him and his family off of red alert. He’s happy for them, their little lovely unit, but he has to hang up fast. He takes a few calls from Jody, who said she was wondering about his mom’s progress. She offers to make some calls on his behalf about the space-time rift once he fills her in and he actually takes her up on it. He calls Max Banes just to check in. Misery loves company and this is someone else that’s grieving. Max sounds tired on the phone, but functional. That’s good. They’re ok.

They’re healing.

It’s a slow and painful process. Dean finds himself staring into space for too long sometimes, and when he comes out of it the whole of him is trembling. He can practically feel the leftover tendrils of angel grace, slivers of it over the years from wounds that Castiel has healed, squirming around in him. It never really leaves you, isn’t that what Sam said? He asks Claire about it and she tells him,  _yeah, I dream I can feel him sometimes._

He sleeps in the guest room when Sam’s not around to judge him for it. Touches the edge of the pillow and closes his eyes and focuses on the thrum of whatever otherworldly mementos are left in his bloodstream.

Carved into his very bones. Hard to recover from something like that. Hard to forget a love that deep.

* * *

Jody’s connections mailed them over some info on alternate realities. He may not have been able to save Cas, but he can still save his mom. Dean throws himself into the project. When he’s between leads, Sam sits with him and puts that beautiful mind where he can. 

He sighs now, running a hand through his hair. He’s cut it again. “I don’t know. This bit here doesn’t look very reliable. I think part of the translation is missing.”

Dean leans over the library table to squint at it. “Hm. Mark it for later.”

Sam sticks a piece of colored tape at the top of the page and reaches for the next document. Dean rolls his neck and grunts when it cracks. Sam kicks his feet up onto the table and puts a finger contemplatively to his lips.

There’s a knock at the door.

Dean slowly looks up from his page. Sam looks back at him and he can tell immediately that they’re thinking the same thing. 

They get up and race for the stairs.

(Hope is a dangerous thing.)

Dean gets there first, heart pounding and palms sweating. He just stares at the doorknob for a long second and licks his lips.

“For God’s sake, Dean, open the door,” Sam rushes out, breathless.

Dean grabs the handle and yanks, nearly smacking himself with the heavy steel in the process. His battered, broken heart stops in its tracks.

“Hello, Dean.”

His heart kickstarts again with a sound like a sob. The only thing that keeps Dean standing where he is would be Sam’s sturdy hand at the base of his neck.

“Prove it,” Sam says desperately, eyes watering. “We can’t let you in until we’re sure - ”

Dean mechanically takes a silver knife from his back pocket, vibrating all over. Sam fumbles for the flask of holy water he keeps inside of his jacket. They hand both to Castiel, and he takes them in hand. Dirt’s clogged underneath his fingernails. He’s sweating.

Castiel slices a little too deep through his forearm, clean and fast and overexcited, and washes away the blood beading up to the surface with the holy water. Only then does Dean surge forward and wrap him in a hug.

“Oh, thank god,” he gasps.

Castiel’s hands come up around his shoulders. He squeezes so tightly and tucks his nose against Dean’s neck. “Dean,” he keeps saying, visibly shaken.

Neither of them wants to let go, that much is clear by the desperate white knuckles and the fistfuls of fabric, but Dean pulls back. He grabs Castiel’s face with his hands and forces him back, just enough to solidly plant his lips on his.

Every inch of him thrums with it, the remnants of him Dean had thought he’d only imagined in his crazier moments leaping to the surface.

Castiel melts into his hold, sighing with an edge of a whimper and pulling Dean in closer by his arms to deepen the kiss. Dean is practically yanking at his hair, grabbing and holding onto any part of him that he can reach.

He pulls back with a quiet noise, dazed and dizzy already. Castiel knocks their foreheads together and laughs. Dean answers with one of his own. The whole exchange lasts maybe a few seconds, but it both feels like a lifetime and is simultaneously not even close to being enough. 

Sam swoops Castiel up into a hug, and Dean lingers in the doorway, half-wondering if this is just another one of his dreams. 

He might wake up in the morning, but he’s going to treasure this while he has it. He  _needs_  this.

 

“How did you even - ?” Sam marvels, seated opposite of Castiel at the library table. “We saw the ash, Cas, we thought for  _sure_  - ”

Dean rounds the corner and puts a hand on Castiel’s shoulder. He hands him a beer and Castiel takes it gratefully from him, sparing a small smile in his direction. “Thank you,” he says, and Dean blushes from head to toe.

He shrugs and takes a sip of the beer. “It’s a strange story,” he admits.

“We got time,” Dean says. And ain’t that a thing of beauty?

Castiel looks over in his direction and smiles again. The ends of his fingertips graze Dean’s denim-clad knee. 

“Here it goes.”

* * *

Castiel opens his eyes, and the first thing he sees is bright blue sky.

He turns his head to the left. Grass tickles his cheek, but the sensation is not unpleasant.

Billie’s big brown eyes and wry smirk stare back at him. 

“Hey,” she intones.

Castiel shrinks in fear. “Hi.”

She adjusts her position on the ground and hums. Her hands are folded on her stomach, legs crossed at the ankles as the wildflowers blow over her. “How’s it going?”

Castiel frowns. “I’ve been better, to be honest.”

Bilie shrugs. “Me too.” She turns her head again to meet his eyes. “Thanks for that.”

Castiel shuts his eyes. “I’m, um. I’m - ”

“You’re not sorry, so don’t pretend like you are.”

Castiel turns his head so he’s looking back up at the sky. A few brightly-colored leaves snap off and flutter to the ground, darting across his field of view for only a moment. It’s hard to tell where they are; a grove, a mountain, a valley? “Is this Heaven?” Castiel asks.

“Duh,” Billie tells him. “But not yours.”

“Whose is it?”

“It’s mine,” Billie says.

Castiel contemplates this. Angels don’t really have heavens; must be a perk of the job for her. “So why am I here?”

Billie tells him, “I brought you here,” but that appears to be all of the explanation he’s going to get. She sits up and leans back on her hands. “Want to go take a walk?” she asks.

Castiel sits up too. He grabs his bony knees with his hands and nods. 

 

They walk in silence for the duration. Billie’s heaven is in fact a small grove, which lets out on the edge of a beautiful hilly town, painted gold and red in the late autumn sun. It’s lovely and warm, not at all what Castiel would have expected. But Billie seems comfortable here, at peace.

She breaks the silence with, “Cosmic consequences, huh?”

Castiel sags. “Karma’s a bitch.”

Billie grins, toothy and scary. “You can say that again. Don’t worry about it, though. You won’t be here long.”

Castiel tilts his head. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Billie says, in her smooth deep voice, “that you can’t stay. You’re not really dead yet, just rebooting.”

Castiel touches his chest, right below his sternum, where the hole of Lucifer’s angel blade should be. “I  _felt_  very dead,” he argued.

Billie shakes her head. “I don’t have all the details. That’s why I brought you  _here_.”

She nods up at a building that Castiel hadn’t realized they’d been approaching. He hesitates next to Billie even when she nods her head. “Go on. Head on in.”

Castiel turns to look at her. “What will you do?”

Billie shrugs. “Whatever I want.”

She turns on her heel and walks away, hands in her pockets and broad shoulders taut beneath her jacket. Castiel watches her go, but his feeling of unease doesn’t lift from him at all even when she’s out of sight, hidden among the canopy of fiery leaves.

He sighs and pushes open the door. It’s an inn, it looks like, or a tavern - wooden and old but well cared for. There’s only one table in the main dining area. One figure sits alone, facing away from the door. 

“Don’t go letting in a draft,” it tells him. A head turns a fraction of an inch over its shoulder to scold him.

Castiel steps into the tavern and shuts the door behind him. His footsteps echo in the large room, until he stops beside the table.

The man, lean and thin and perfectly coifed as always, gestures with a bony hand to the seat across from him. “Sit,” he commands.

Castiel does. He folds his hands in his lap.

With an uncharacteristically kind smile, Death pushes a plate towards him. “Buttermilk biscuit,” he informs him. “Drenched in honey and sprinkled with sea salt. Absolutely delightful.”

Castiel doesn’t touch the food, but he does bow his head slightly. “I’d heard you were dead.”

Death hums, considering. “Well. Like you, I’m quite hard to kill, it seems.”

Castiel narrows his eyes. “The reaper told me the same thing. That I won’t be here for very long.”

Death shrugs and jams a fork into the squishy center of his biscuit. The crust flakes beautifully, dropping into the honey coating the plate and sinking below the amber surface, chased by the tines of his fork. “Your grace has been exhausted, Castiel. Usually, that’s enough to kill an angel.”

Castiel blinks. “Usually?”

Death raises his eyebrows but only continues dissecting his meal. “You’ve got a soul, my dear boy. A back-up generator.”

Castiel gapes. He leans back into his chair. “That’s… impossible.”

Death shrugs. “It’s not unheard of. Extremely unlikely, yes, but you’ve never been one for the odds, have you.”

Castiel fiddles with his hands in his lap, tracing the ridges in the bones of his knuckles. “How did that happen?”

Death swipes his long pinky finger through the honey, picking up bits of biscuit along the way. “Well,” he says. “No one can be sure, of course. But it has something to do with you being given a body of your very own. Choosing your own path time and time again, living among the humans and transitioning from one to another so many times. It’s a tiny thing, not yet fully formed, but it will be truly miraculous once it blooms,” Death says. He winks and licks his finger.

A soul. Castiel has gone and earned himself a soul.  _Finally a real boy,_ Dean might have said. “Incredible.”

“It certainly is,” Death agrees.

Castiel thinks about this. He puts a hand up to the center of his chest, where the hole should be, and thinks about it. “You understand then why you can’t stay,” he’s told. “Once your soul is strong enough - ”

“I’ll be human?”

“Permanently.”

Castiel nods. “Last chance.”

“The very last,” Death says. He pushes his plate to the side. “And when it is your time, I will take great pleasure in coming out of retirement to collect you.”

He smiles, and Castiel does too.

Now, unfortunately, there’s nothing to do but wait.

* * *

Sam is gaping at him with something akin to awe, but Dean is laughing so hard that tears threaten to spill onto his cheeks.

“You just went and made yourself a soul,” Dean laughs. “You fucking - how are you even real?”

Castiel shrugs. “It’s not like I meant to.”

“Well, we’re glad you did,” Dean says, much more at ease than he’d been a month ago. “Seriously. Welcome home, Cas.”

Castiel reddens a bit and lifts a hand to his cheek to feel the warmth spreading there. “Thank you. It’s very good to be back.”

Sam kicks him lightly underneath the table, a sign of affection. Castiel kicks him back and grins.

Dean doesn’t want to talk shop tonight. He wants to celebrate. He wants to order pizza and stare at Cas until he falls asleep to make sure he’s still real. There’s still a part of him that, after Mary, warns him not to get too attached too quickly - there might be something wrong with Castiel now that he’s back. He’s human now; maybe he’ll turn around and die on him tomorrow. Dean’s not sure he’d be able to take that, and for once he isn’t preoccupied with worst case scenarios. He’s too thrilled to be cautious.

He takes Castiel’s hand under the table. Castiel’s thumb smoothes up the side of it and he looks at him out of the corner of his eyes, still listening to whatever Sam is excitedly gesticulating over but happily sharing a moment anyway. 

This thing with Jack, they’ll just have to figure it out. The lot of them are brave and stupid enough to pull off pretty much anything at this point. Castiel will probably want to Save Him or something.

“You want another beer?” Dean asks him.

Castiel nods. “Sure.”

Dean squeezes his hand once and stands, letting it drop from his own. Sam definitely notices, but he just smiles. Dean smiles back, flushed, and walks into the kitchen.

A burnt black feather still sits on the table. Dean touches the edges as he walks by.


	30. post 12.23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another mourning concept.

He’s seeing him again. Everywhere. 

Back when he was fresh from Purgatory he couldn’t be sure that what he was seeing was even real, but he  _knows_ now that this is not. 

Well, except that it is, in a way. Shimmering blue light in the distance, not grace but something else entirely. Real as the far-off twinkle of the stars, beautiful and unreachable in all the same ways. He stares for a very long time into the burning center of wisping shapes, cold and familiar. The heavy expression fixed on the face is endlessly unnerving, like the eyes see right through Dean and into the fabric of the world behind him. Dean always ends up turning his eyes down in shame. Out of grief that he’ll never get to move past.

He bundles himself up in jackets like he had when he was young and just as scared and alone as he feels right now. Swimming in them because of all the weight he’s lost. Not on purpose, it just… happened that way. The joints in his hands stick and crack when he cleans his guns. He takes up smoking again just to get some warmth back in his chest.

_We could make this go away,_ Sam tries to tell him. Dean won’t have it. The chill in his bones is a comfort, and he’ll fight to keep it even if it ends up freezing him from the inside out.

Them in the passenger seat again together. The Impala’s chassis doesn’t balance out the way that it does when there’s two people in there, leaning on the turns and squealing in the wheels, but he can still pretend. He hangs an elbow out the open window and taps his cigarette out onto the oil-slick asphalt. He keeps his eyes straight ahead when they pull up to a red light. He shivers and fights the urge to turn his head, stare into dead eyes.

Dean tried to talk, the first few times. But there’s just not enough of him left to dredge up an answer, Sam thinks, not even the affectionate syllable of a name. There’s not much they can do about that, but Dean loses sleep over it anyway.

It’s Dean’s curse to be haunted by what he wants and loves. Ghosts, sometimes, they’re not tied to things. They’re tied to the people that hold too tightly to them.


	31. a horrifying concept (post 12.23)

The knock comes at a quarter to three. Dean, of course, is still awake. Drinking in the library. Ashamed as he is to admit it, his heart still lurches with hope at the sound.

He wipes off his hands and tries to convince himself that he’s not rushing up the stairs, heart pounding all the while. He opens the door and his face hardens into a frown. 

“What do  _you_ want?” he spits.

“You know why I’m here.”

Dean shakes his head, wiping a hand down his face. It’s still cool with the condensation from his bottle. “Yeah, well, you’re too late. Sorry.”

He abandons the front hallway and walks back to the library, not caring if he’s followed. Judging by the quiet sound of tinny footsteps on the stairs, he is. His eyes follow his guest as she takes the seat across from him at the table, eyeing his bottle of liquor. He doesn’t offer her any.

He’s hit with an idea, sitting here and staring at her. It’s all but a shout. “Teach me,” Dean blurts.

“I can’t,” she says. “You know what it does.”

Dean grits his teeth. “I don’t care. I want you to teach me.”

“Why?”

Dean’s fists unclench, his shoulders drop. “Because I lost someone too. And I need to do  _something_.”

A chair slides back from the table with a quiet squeak. Dean doesn’t raise his eyes, sure that this is the end. His last resort slipping through his fingers. But war-hardened hands take his and he does look up, right into the vacant stare of someone too far gone down the road of revenge.

Lily Sunder nods. “I’ll help you.”

Dean doesn’t feel afraid. He’s very good at making deals.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More horrifying concepts to be found in my post season 12 / pre season 13 speculation fic, titled ["doomed but meant to be"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11055894)


End file.
